Sports Is Running the Biggest Live Event Playbook Right Now

The biggest live event operation happening right now isn't a concert tour. The FIFA World Cup is running across 16 cities, running 13 fan festival sites simultaneously, with a combined 523,000 person capacity and 21 nights of concerts in Monterrey alone.

Sports is now a full-scale live entertainment production. The operational demands are the same: crews, payroll, multi-market logistics, and compressed timelines. That convergence puts real pressure on anyone managing workforce and production across markets. Here's what's happening and what it means for your next event.

Latest Trend Watch: The World Cup is running the biggest live event operation on earth

48 teams. 104 matches. 16 venues across three countries. FIFA built a centralized broadcast center in Dallas managing graphics, replay, and audio for all 16 venues at once. Before kickoff, every host stadium stripped naming rights, pulled sponsor logos, and replaced concession branding across three countries on compressed timelines with specialized crews. The coordination model running right now is the same challenge any multi-venue operator faces, just at global scale.

Week of July 7, 2025

In the news

Touring & Live Event Insights

Monterrey's Fan Zone is Hosting 21 Nights of Concerts Alongside the World Cup

Chayanne, Imagine Dragons, Enrique Iglesias, and Grupo Firme headline the FIFA Fan Festival at Parque Fundidora, running June 11 through July 19. Full concert production stacked on top of a sporting event operation, same market, same timeline. This is what multi-use venue programming looks like at scale.

Venue & Operations Watch

16 Cities. 13 Fan Zones. One Coordinated Operation.

Every host city is running its own fan zone with live entertainment, food, sponsor activations, and match screenings while the stadiums run the games. Miami built a dedicated 10,000-seat amphitheater. New York's Times Square site holds 40,000. The centralized production model preserves local execution without duplicating infrastructure across 16 sites. For festival operators managing multiple simultaneous markets, it's worth paying attention to.

Music & Industry Strategy

Sports Venues Becoming Year-Round Entertainment Operations

Gorillaz headlined Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on June 20. Formula 1 races run headline concert nights. The Super Bowl halftime show is the most-watched live performance in the US every year. The same stadium hosting a match this weekend may host a concert the next. Crew requirements, union agreements, and payroll infrastructure don't transfer between those events, and operators who know the difference are the ones scaling.

Sports & Entertainment Crossovers

X Games Sacramento Runs This Week With Live Concerts Alongside the Competition

MoonPay X Games Sacramento runs June 26 to 28 at Cal Expo, combining skateboard, BMX, and Moto X with live concerts across all three days. One of the clearest current examples of a sports event built as a full entertainment production: separate crews, staging, and scheduling running in parallel under one operation.

ICYMI: Other stories we're watching

The Book of Mormon grossed $2.2 million in a single week at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre

Top 100 touring artists have grossed $3.16 billion at mid-year 2026, up 12.3% over 2025, with 26.3 million tickets sold

Dolby Theatre's new co-GM says artists should consider scaling down to theaters and residencies

Meet our team at these upcoming events

Lizette Gomez will be at the Giggs Industry Night in Burbank. If you're a tour manager, production manager, business manager, or artist manager, this is the room to be in, and we're the team to find.

Lizette Gomez brings 15 years of live entertainment payroll expertise to IAVM Venue Connect. Find her there to talk through how Cast & Crew supports your venue.

Lizette Gomez (1)

Lizette Gomez | Senior of Director Sports & Live Entertainment Sales

Lizette has 15 years of hands-on payroll experience with touring, venue operations, and multi-state workforce management. She's spent her career helping tour managers, production managers, and business managers cut through the back-office complexity that comes with the territory.

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Cast & Crew | Sports & Live Entertainment

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Your team has enough to manage. Cast & Crew brings 50 years of experience navigating the complexities behind the scenes, from union agreements and multi-state taxes to crew onboarding and workers' comp, so your production keeps moving.

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07/10/2026

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