{"id":199280,"date":"2026-05-21T21:47:07","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T21:47:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/199280\/"},"modified":"2026-05-21T21:47:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T21:47:07","slug":"philadelphia-sports-economic-panel-talks-world-cup-summer-events","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/199280\/","title":{"rendered":"Philadelphia sports economic panel talks World Cup, summer events"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Robbins said it\u2019s key to bring communities together around sporting events to make sure residents feel part of something. He said community outreach was key in planning the return of the popular race.\n<\/p>\n<p>Arun Prabhakaran, president of Urban Affairs Coalition, is an enthusiastic ambassador for Alpha Prime Racing. He\u2019s getting people in the Philadelphia region excited about the sport and Lavar Scott, a young Alpha Prime racer.\n<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou know, when you say NASCAR, people are like, \u2018Huh?\u2019\u201d Prabhakaran said. \u201cBut what they don\u2019t know is that NASCAR desperately wants Philadelphia as a market.\u201d\n<\/p>\n<p>He said that Scott has been racing since he was a little boy, and could inspire other kids in Philadelphia to embrace the sport, or the technology that fuels it.\n  <\/p>\n<p>As far as what else Philadelphia sports fans could see in the near future, a <a href=\"https:\/\/billypenn.com\/2025\/06\/30\/at-last-philly-to-get-wnba-franchise-in-2030\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">WNBA team<\/a> is a high point of interest. The panelists had no suggestions on what the team might be named, but said they hoped that a WNBA team might pave the way for more women\u2019s sports in the city.\n<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt would be nice to be five years from now, if not started, but at least on the road to adding professional women\u2019s soccer and also professional women\u2019s hockey to that mix,\u201d Laws said.\n<\/p>\n<p>There was also some support for more pickleball events, or even a professional team.\n<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think the Philadelphia Pickles is it, right there,\u201d said Stephen Vanyo, who works as a registered NFL agent.\n<\/p>\n<p>Fans seem to have a healthy appetite for more sporting events, and panelists agreed that there are enough sponsorship dollars to go around to support a wide array of events.\n<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen we met with potential sponsors, it was our job to really just convey to them what our ultimate mission was, instill that emotion in them and get them to understand that, you know, it wasn\u2019t just about the race,\u201d Robbins said.\n<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was about a city, about the people of this great city. And they got it.\u201d\n        <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Robbins said it\u2019s key to bring communities together around sporting events to make sure residents feel part of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":199281,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[69,71,70,39683,726,2237],"class_list":["post-199280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-philadelphia-sports","tag-sports","tag-world-cup-2026"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199280\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}