Get ready to channel your inner Ted Lasso, Chicago.
Thousands of soccer fans are expected to don their colors and descend on Lincoln Park this weekend to cheer on their favorite British clubs as Premier League Mornings Live brings a nationally televised two-day watch party to Chicago.
The fan festival, hosted by the Premier League and NBC Sports, which holds the exclusive U.S. television rights to the top echelon of British football, will feature nine large-screen TVs broadcasting 10 live matches on Saturday and Sunday morning.
The NBC Sports team of host Rebecca Lowe and analysts Robbie Earle, Robbie Mustoe and Tim Howard will broadcast the Premier League Mornings Live studio show from the event starting at 7 a.m. each day.
Special guests will include Premier League champion and former Chelsea captain Gary Cahill, former Arsenal captain Patrick Vieira and “Chicago P.D.” actor Benjamin Aguilar, an accomplished soccer player in his own right.
The Premier League event comes to Chicago as professional soccer, long relegated to second-tier status in the U.S., continues to gain traction with fans. Ratings are on the rise for NBC’s early-bird weekend telecasts of British football matches, while the MLS, the U.S. pro league that includes the Chicago Fire, has a national platform with Apple TV+ and is on pace for record attendance this season, bolstered by Argentinian superstar Lionel Messi, who plays for Miami.
The Fire drew more than 55,000 fans to Soldier Field for an August match against Miami, despite Messi not playing because of an ankle injury. Attendance for Fire home games is averaging 21,500 this season, an 18% year-over-year increase, the team said.
Domestic interest in soccer is also getting a major boost from the anticipated arrival of the World Cup to North America in 2026, with matches hosted by 13 MLS cities. Chicago did not make the cut.
“This is all tied into the World Cup coming to North America,” said Marc Ganis, a Chicago-based sports marketing consultant. “Whether this fan fest is wildly successful or just brings in the diehards, it’s still going to have greater exposure (for soccer) and there’ll be more coming up, including more friendlies (exhibition matches) next year, all leading to the World Cup.”
Ganis said soccer is moving from the fringes into the mainstream of pro sports in the U.S., but the MLS is limited by the reality that most of the best players ply their trade overseas, including top American talent.
Just as the NBA, NFL and MLB are building fan bases internationally, the Premier League is increasingly resonating with U.S. soccer fans, who appreciate the quality, competitiveness and physicality of the British game, he said.
“Americans who are interested in soccer take notice of the Premier League, because it is the best league in the world,” Ganis said.
Culturally, interest in the Premier League has certainly been piqued by the hit Apple TV show “Ted Lasso,” in which a fictional American football coach navigates the fervent fandom and very foreign world of British football.
This weekend, fans will be able to watch the full slate of Premier League matches al fresco, amid the greenery of Lincoln Park, the lakefront and the Chicago skyline. The schedule begins with West Ham United vs. Chelsea at 6:30 a.m. Saturday and culminates with Manchester City vs. Arsenal, the league’s top two teams, who kick off at 10:30 a.m. Sunday.
Attendees will also be able to have photos taken with the Premier League Trophy and club mascots. Other activities include youth soccer clinics and coach development sessions run in collaboration with the Chicago Fire and the Chicago Red Stars, the hometown entry into the women’s professional soccer league.
The event is free, but online registration has closed. A Premier League spokesperson said thousands signed up, but declined to offer specific numbers. In April, more than 15,000 fans attended a similar Premier League weekend event in Nashville, Tennessee.
Premier League and NBC rented the grounds at the southern edge of Lincoln Park from the Chicago Park District for the two-day event. The fan festival will set up in the area between South Pond, LaSalle Drive, Stockton Drive and DuSable Lake Shore Drive.
Chicago is the 10th U.S. city to host Premier League Mornings Live, which has drawn more than 85,000 soccer fans since the first event came to Washington, D.C., in 2018.
The traveling fan festival has since landed in New York, Boston, Austin, Miami, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Orlando and, most recently, Nashville, which set attendance records for the event.
Kara Bachman, executive director of the Chicago Sports Commission, said the city was approached by the Premier League earlier this year about hosting the event. The September date, which is early in the Premier League season and late in Chicago’s peak tourism season, proved a good match, she said.
“September is definitely a nice month to drive some business into Chicago,” said Bachman, who expects local, regional and international attendees to come to the event.
The city is hoping to top the Nashville attendance mark, which could provide another tourism boost after a busy summer that saw everything from the second NASCAR Chicago Street Race to the Democratic National Convention bring an influx of visitors — and favorable media attention.
Bachman touted the media value of having NBC back in Chicago for another nationally televised sports event after the ratings success of NASCAR’s Cup Series race through Grant Park, which averaged nearly 3.9 million viewers during the July Fourth weekend.
“The number of fans tuning in for Premier League, they’re eating up every moment of it,” she said. “And then for this coming weekend, those moments will include pictures of Chicago, and thousands of Premier League team fans having an amazing time in Chicago, watching the games together in great spirit.”
The Premier League fan festival also represents the latest iteration of a growing sports exchange program between Chicago and London, which potentially bolsters everything from tourism to business investment in both cities.
In June 2023, about 110,000 fans watched the Chicago Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals split a two-game series at London Stadium, with the MLB event generating about $70 million in economic benefit, according to London & Partners, the city’s economic development agency.
Next month, Chicago will export American football across the pond when the Bears play the Jacksonville Jaguars at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, the eponymous home of a Premier League club. The Oct. 13 game will mark the fourth time the Bears have played in London since 1986, when the then-defending Super Bowl champs defeated the Dallas Cowboys in a preseason game.
“London and Chicago are key partner cities and nothing underlines this more than the two-way exchange of our sports franchises with the Bears playing in London this October and the Premier League Mornings Live Fan Festival coming to Chicago,” Stephen Feline, director of North America for London & Partners, said in a statement. “This close relationship is mirrored in the business world with companies spanning financial services, tech and sustainability from both cities expanding and thriving in the other.”
Last season, the Premier League schedule, which is broadcast from August through May across NBC and its cable networks, averaged a record 546,000 viewers and topped 2 million viewers for a contest between title contenders Manchester City and Arsenal in March.
That could mean a lot of eyeballs on Chicago for Sunday’s rematch during the fan festival. Bachman said the city is ready for another moment in the national TV spotlight.
“Our city can speak for itself when it comes to images — the skyline, the parks, the lake,” Bachman said. “It looks good on TV. So good for us, good for them.”