When Shane Gillis fans file into Lincoln Financial Field on Friday night for the actor and comedian’s almost sold-out show, they’ll never know that the venue was the center of the soccer universe in Philadelphia for two weeks of the FIFA World Cup.
At least there will hardly be any reminders.
Signage is gone. Seats that were removed to make way for a wider field have been replaced. And when you drive past the south end of the field along I-95, the outline of Abraham Lincoln’s head has returned, instead of the giant blue banner that covered the Lincoln Financial Field sign.
In just 11 days, a team of union workers — from crane operators to field turf professionals to painters — flooded the venue, ripped down anything that had FIFA attached to it, and turned Philadelphia Stadium back into the Linc.
But what happens to all of that signage?
The giant flags during pregame ceremonies? The way finders located both inside and outside the stadium? The caps on the team benches conveying which side each nation has on the sideline?
There’s a WhatsApp group for that.
“A lot of our staff and volunteers who come from those countries get to take them, and people get just so excited when we post them in our WhatsApp group,” said Jolyon Bowman, FIFA’s chief venue operations director for the matches in Philadelphia. “We had a member of our staff the other day show off the banner that she received, and hung it up in her backyard. There’s a lot of pride among all our staff in what we accomplished. And I think people wanted to keep that.”
Bowman says for many of the banners, there’s actually a company FIFA works with that takes them and will create tote bags that also get passed on to staff members as a commemoration of the work they put in.
“We try — I mean, as much as we can — to reduce, reuse, and recycle, and I think we sure did that,” Bowman said. “There are just some things that have to go in the garbage, but a lot of that stuff ends up in the hands of the people [who] have worked the event here; they’re free to take that stuff.”
Staff at Lincoln Financial Field got an opportunity to keep some items as well, but FIFA also noted that it donated leftover food to local charities. Televisions that were used as monitors during the tournament were gifted to the School District of Philadelphia.
‘No room for improvisation’
The efficiency in restoring an arena back to its original look in just 11 days began 18 months before the start of the tournament, says Bowman. Coordinating labor, collaborating with the Eagles, and looking at the calendar of events for the Linc all come into play — especially when you’re not trying to overstay your welcome.
“One-hundred percent of it is all talked about and organized before. There’s no room for improvisation when you’re dealing with a change of this scale,” Bowman said. “We start talking about bumping out on the first match day of the whole tournament. We knew there was a huge concert [in Shane Gillis’ show] coming up. Lincoln Financial is going to be hosting 60,000 people on Friday, so we knew we were under the gun to get it done.”
Bowman is very familiar with the process — he’s been in venue operations for nearly 30 years. He can trace his footprint in Philly working as an operations volunteer back to when the Linc first opened in 2003 with a soccer match between European club powers Barcelona and Manchester United.
Though he’s not originally from the area, the native Ugandan who now resides in Washington D.C., says his touchpoints here are numerous, including staying in a section of West Philadelphia while his now wife attended Penn.
Above and beyond
During his 18-month preparation, which also included last summer’s FIFA Club World Cup, Bowman says he got acclimated to Philly courtesy of the Eagles, to better understand the day-to-day workings and how to incorporate what they wanted to do both on and off the field.
Perks of the job? He and his team received a season credential to Eagles games to better understand gameday operations, Philly style.
“I spent almost two years in Philadelphia preparing for this,” Bowman said. “The Eagles were on board for the World Cup right after their Super Bowl victory. They gave us the keys to the stadium. I saw a lot of Eagles games and was able to prep at any event I wanted to go to.
“The Eagles gave me a credential to learn as much as I wanted and it really prepared me for the whole thing. Talking to other venue directors [in other World Cup cities], I can tell you that was really unique experience. I just felt like the Eagles went beyond what was expected in trying to host and be a great host, and that just trickled down to everybody in the city.”
That gracious hosting experience started with the Club World Cup, which offered a beta test for how FIFA stadium workers, operations at Lincoln Financial Field, and outside contractors would coexist.
Bowman estimates “hundreds” of people were directly involved in the operations process from the set up to the restoration, along with scores more who worked in a temporary capacity.
He notes that it’s what made for one of the smoothest restoration projects he’s been apart of, piggybacking what he personally felt was one of the best FIFA World Cups in recent memory.
He would know, considering his life has been setting them up and breaking them down for over a decade.
“I’ve been doing sporting events all my life, but there’s nothing quite like the World Cup that brings that international joy and just happiness of being together,” Bowman said. “[During the June 27 Croatia-Ghana match], I left the soccer game for about 15 minutes to go check out the fan experience [in the Linc’s Headhouse Plaza], and when the DJ played Ghanaian songs, Croatians were dancing. And then the DJ plays the Croatian songs, and the Ghanaians are dancing.
“There was just so much joy, [I think people] enjoyed being together, enjoyed being in Philadelphia. This world needed a World Cup, and I’m happy that I was able to be a little piece of it.”
