{"id":368216,"date":"2026-06-20T09:16:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-20T09:16:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/368216\/"},"modified":"2026-06-20T09:16:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-20T09:16:08","slug":"world-cup-crowds-have-san-jose-businesses-bringing-in-more-staff-and-alcohol-nbc-bay-area-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/368216\/","title":{"rendered":"World Cup crowds have San Jose businesses bringing in more staff and alcohol \u2013 NBC Bay Area"},"content":{"rendered":"

San Pedro Square in downtown San Jose has continued to see enormous crowds day after day for World Cup watch parties. Thursday, the area was crowded with more than 30,000<\/a> fans clamoring to watch the Mexico versus South Korea matchup, so many people that security had to turn some away. <\/p>\n

The San Jose Earthquakes have designated the square the official Soccer Celebration headquarters<\/a> through July 19, and fans seem to have taken to the watch party environment in the blocked-off downtown street.<\/p>\n

These watch parties began on July 11, and now businesses in the area have had more than a week to adjust to the massive influx of traffic.<\/p>\n

“It’s been absolutely insane, the Super Bowl on steroids,” said Douglas Cookerly, VP of Operations for the Sushi Confidential bar and restaurant in San Pedro Square.<\/p>\n

In particular, businesses say that drinks have been in demand — especially given the warm weather. They noted that the most in-demand drink is beer, followed closely by tequila. <\/p>\n

Cookerly said he was expecting big crowds during the World Cup, but didn’t anticipate the popularity of the watch parties to rise to this intense level.<\/p>\n

He said much like the World Cup is the chance for teams to shine on a global stage, this period of time is a chance for San Jose businesses to shine and make an impression on people who’ve never been there before. <\/p>\n

“We\u2019ve been ordering beer and liquor every single day, doubling up on the food, calling in the reserve staff, yeah, it’s been all hands on deck,” he added.<\/p>\n

Sushi Confidential has been so busy that owner Randy Musterer posted on social media that the business got an alert from San Jose water about a possible water leak, but it turns out the business was just using a lot of water to wash all those dishes and flush toilets.<\/p>\n

Friday, fans filled San Pedro Square throughout the day to watch three major matches: USA versus Australia, Brazil versus Haiti, and Turkey versus Paraguay.<\/p>\n

San Jose resident Luke Van Poetsch said he went to the square for the community watch party experience. <\/p>\n

“I mean, here you get the atmosphere, you get the feels, you hear the vuvuzelas going off, it really adds to the atmosphere,” he said. <\/p>\n

The energy isn’t just drawing in locals; plenty of international visitors are stopping by as well.<\/p>\n

“It’s really, really good vibes,” said Cai Clarke, who is the bay area, some people say its kind of boring, but I\u2019m here and its absolute vibes, so I\u2019m having a great time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"San Pedro Square in downtown San Jose has continued to see enormous crowds day after day for World…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":368131,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[15392,88,90,89,5393],"class_list":["post-368216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-2026-world-cup","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news","tag-world-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=368216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368216\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/368131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}