World Cup fever hits London as tourism and businesses boom ahead of opening matches

From local businesses to the tourism board, the Forest City is getting ready for Canada to host the World Cup. CTV's Brent Lale with the story.

World Cup fever has hit the Forest City.

“A lot of people coming in for their Canada jerseys and we have a big Croatian community as well,” said Nico Rivera of Soccer World in London. “We can barely keep all of these jerseys in store, which is great.”

The tournament begins Thursday with two matches (Mexico vs. South Africa and South Korea vs. Czechia), while Canada kicks off its first appearance since 2022 on Friday afternoon.

There will be watch parties around the city, including at Scots Corner.

“This event has lot of different times with games played at 3 p.m., 6 p.m. and 9 p.m., which is a little bit different,” said manager Billy Thomson. “It’s usually over in Europe and the games are earlier. It’ll be interesting to see the games on later at night.”

London’s number one soccer pub will be packed inside and can accommodate 40 to 60 people on their patio which will have 80-inch televisions.

“The England and Canada games from past experience will be great. It also starts off with Scotland play Saturday night at 9 p.m. which is crazy too right. We’ll have them and then the Canada games are definitely a big draw right now,” he said.

Across the street, Tourism London is capitalizing on the event happening in Canada.

“Our Tourism London landing page has skyrocketed with first time visitors,” said Sean Murray, director, culture & entertainment tourism with Tourism London. “We’re getting thousands of people every day who’ve never been to the site checking out what London has for the first time.”

Their ‘A Match Made in London’ campaign offers fans cheaper hotels than host city Toronto, a 30 per cent discount on rail travel between London and Toronto and a FIFA party is scheduled for July 4 at Victoria Park.

“Partnering with FIFA, ‘Canada celebrates the World Cup’ is going to be a live watch party with big screens, live music, food vendors and the FIFA logo,” said Murray. “There’s going to be a lot of people coming here to celebrate and see what we have offer. Destination Ontario identified that World Cup travelers are really likely to go beyond that host city, so we want to encourage them to check out the festivals we have for food and music and the energy that we have surrounding the game.”

London is a multicultural city and back at Soccer World, Nico Rivera – born in Colombia – is excited to see the vibe here over the next month.

“I can tell you personally that I know people from every continent in the world that live here in London, so it’s amazing,” said Rivera.

There is a record 48 national teams playing in this year’s tournament.

“It’s amazing the mix of cultures and now that the World Cup is here, I feel like it’s a time for all the cultures to come together and enjoy the game. I’m very happy for Canada to host and hopefully we’ll see an historic three points in the first game this Friday against Bosnia,” he added.

Fans can watch that match at many different venues across the city. Tourism London is busy compiling a list of watch parties which will be posted on their website.

Some of those include BMO Centre, the German Canadian Club, the Canadian Brewhouse, the Beach Hangar and Match Pub and Eatery.