Meeting the moment.

That’s how Jessie Adcock of the Host Committee described the work done by all involved in planning for Vancouver to host seven FIFA World Cup games at BC Place Stadium.

This week marks the halfway point of Vancouver’s involvement, with three matches left to play at the stadium, including New Zealand taking on Belgium Friday night.

“On a personal level, I would just say that I’m beyond happy with where things have landed,” said Adcock, pointing to the electric atmosphere in the city and the ability for thousands of people to attend a free fan festival at Hastings Park.

She highlighted the two Team Canada games, where thousands of fans participated in the marches leading to the stadium. Fans of Mexico lining up at the festival gates on the first day of the tournament was special, too, Adcock said.

Then there was Egyptian superstar Mo Salah celebrating with fans downtown after Egypt’s first World Cup win. Salah was later gifted a drum from Musqueam Indian Band Chief Wayne Sparrow as the team boarded a plane to play in Seattle.

“That moment was another example of what the World Cup brings,” she said. “It happened in Vancouver, but it brought joy to a nation thousands of miles away, and we became sort of the window into that joy.”

FIFA ‘brand protection’

Despite the crush of people and celebrations, the city’s 311 phone line had only generated a total of five noise complaints related to BC Place Stadium and the FIFA fan festival, between June 11 and 23.

The city’s bylaw enforcement team integrated “FIFA brand protection” into their regular duties since the start of the tournament. Inspectors have spoken to several businesses and individuals about bylaw compliance matters, but no fines or penalties had been issued to date.

“The city takes an education-first approach to bylaw enforcement, including informing businesses and individuals of non-compliance, explaining requirements and offering options to achieve compliance,” the city’s communications department said in an email Friday.

“Further enforcement measures such as fines or impoundment may be considered after efforts to achieve voluntary compliance have been exhausted.”

Human rights

Prior to the first World Cup game in Vancouver, the city released a “human rights action plan” that focused heavily on concerns from residents on how vulnerable people would be treated during the tournament.

As of Friday, no human rights violation incidents related to vulnerable people had been reported to the city, according to the city.

“The city has received some feedback related to accessibility measures through email and the FIFA human rights grievance reporting portal, which staff are reviewing and assessing with our event-delivery partners,” the city said.

“Teams will continue to monitor various sources to ensure any reports of human rights impacts are reviewed and responded to.

In an interview Thursday with Business In Vancouver, Adcock provided more insight into the planning and execution of the plan to host the seven matches in Vancouver. The following is a condensed and edited version of the interview.

How’s it going?

Generally speaking, we are really happy with how things are going so far. The Host Committee plays a role in enabling a number of different moving parts, whether that’s the movement of teams and people and goods across the city.

And then obviously making sure that we have done our best to deliver what is a World Cup city atmosphere, but keep everybody safe at the same time. So we’re reaching our halfway point here and we’re really happy with the results so far.

What we’re seeing with the crowds, the busy fan festival, a plugged Granville Street — is all of that in line with what you were planning?

In the beginning there was a wide range of expectations. The spectrum was very, very broad. There were people who thought, well, we have Canucks games and Whitecaps games and Lions games all the time. So why are we making such a fuss about seven matches? That was one side of the spectrum.

The other side was people who’ve been to 10 or more World Cups telling us, ‘You have no idea what you’re going to get. Being a World Cup host city is like nothing you’ve ever experienced. It’s unlike the Olympics. It’s unlike any other large sporting event.’

So we had modelled a bunch of scenarios, and then we had a plan to augment and scale, and do that through strong relationships with the safety and security agencies, with the city, with the province and with the federal government to safely meet the moment.

So what’s working?

Once we had the draw [of the matches], we started working directly with the teams themselves on their movements when they were in Vancouver, as well as their needs for their friends and family and fan bases and their fans to start organizing back in December. Then working with local businesses and local tourism partners to enable and help them deliver on their visions.

I think those relationships have really enabled us to not just deliver the Canada atmosphere, but also the Turkish march and the Qatar march and the New Zealand march and create special moments for every team, irrespective of where they came from.

What’s not working?

In terms of what hasn’t worked well, I don’t want to jinx it.

Was there anything you’ve had to tweak along the way?

Oh, yeah. We modelled based on nobody’s going to show up to everybody’s going to show up. And so we have different triggers and plans in place. For example, [Wednesday’s] march, I don’t think anybody could have ever imagined that we’d have that many Canadians in that sea of red marching towards BC Place. Not everybody had a ticket, but they still got to enjoy the march.

Once we saw the Canada-Qatar march, we were then able to accommodate and work with the Voyageurs [national team supporters] to plan for a larger march. We have daily check-ins across all of our partner agencies and organizations.

And we learn from the day and then we adjust the next day and adjust it in a way that we are effectively scaling up. Really, everything we’ve done so far has been scale up to the next volumetric level.

I know you’ve kept track of the number of people who have attended the fan festival. It’s fluctuated from 11,480 on June 17 to 40,943 on June 18. The Host Committee’s estimates were that up to 25,000 people per day would visit the site. Are you on track for that?

Some days we have 16,000 and there’s been days of 19,000 and 24,000 and then two days [when Team Canada played] where we’ve had 40,000. What we’re seeing is that depending on the matches that are being played, the fan bases are turning over.

So if you have the Canada match playing, then the red jerseys are leaving and the Mexican jerseys are coming in or the Brazilian jerseys are coming in. There is a constant turnover. It’s like a kaleidoscope of colours all day. To me, that has been one of the coolest parts of this experience is a mixture of cultures and community.

Team Canada’s game against Switzerland saw the amphitheatre seats sold out, and the free area in front of the stage reach capacity. But overall, how are ticket sales going for the amphitheatre seats?

They’re pretty robust, but not every day is sold out. The portion of seats that we allocated for sale is not the material part of our business model. And I think we’ve over indexed on the popularity of those seats, to be honest, as an indicator of attendance. From the very beginning, our goal was to deliver a free, inclusive, family friendly atmosphere. And that is what we have accomplished.

Our goal was never to fill the limited number of amphitheatre seats. I’m not looking at the amphitheatre seats going, ‘Oh we haven’t sold every single one and therefore today is not successful.’ That’s not my indicator.

Have you had to spend any more money than budgeted?

No. A lot of our budget is being spent now. Most of our expenditures are as we planned and as expected. We’ll find out when all the final bills come in at the end [of the tournament]. We’re halfway through, so we still have a few more weeks to go. But by all accounts, most of our forecasts have been pretty accurate.

Many people have heralded the pedestrian-only Granville Street as a real success. There have been various media reports quoting people saying it should remain pedestrian-only from Davie to West Georgia. As lead of the Host Committee, do you have an opinion on this — or any influence on making that happen?

The atmosphere on Granville Street right now is very, very different than our typical Granville Street atmosphere. And when we have these collective human moments where we’re all participating in a shared experience, we don’t want to lose it. It could be a wedding, it could be a reception, it could be a graduation. It’s a global event in this case.

It’s a special moment in our city’s history. That said, these are really complicated initiatives. There’s a lot of people in the background working on public safety, working on road closures, transit, good host committee and partnerships with the BIAs and the city itself. And maybe we’ve kind of made it look easy. We all want a lot more of a good thing.

Of all the moments that have happened since the tournament began — the fan festival, the marches to the stadium, Granville Street being plugged with people — what has most surprised you about all of this? Or has anything surprised you?

We’re the only city now in the world who’s hosted the world’s fair [Expo 86], the Olympic Games, the Paralympic Games, Women’s World Cup, Invictus Games and now the men’s World Cup. We are now at a very, very different, distinct global level.

I think the whole experience has been very different than anything I’ve ever experienced in my whole career. [Editor’s note: Adcock is the former chief technology officer for the City of Vancouver and former general manager of development, buildings and licensing.]

Soccer is, at its very core, rooted in family and community. And what we’ve seen is family and community come out to celebrate culture, celebrate sport, spend time with each other.

So when you find yourselves in these moments of density with so many people around, all experiencing joy in tandem at the same time, the palpable energy from that…I mean, you can’t deny it. That’s the electricity. You don’t get that from delivering an IT project.

Note: BIV sent an email Thursday to the Vancouver Police Department’s media unit for an interview regarding public safety and the tournament, but had not received a response prior to deadline.

BIV’s free newsletters cover daily business, real estate, B.C. politics and more. Sign up here for B.C.’s most important business news delivered directly to your inbox.

[email protected]

X/@Howellings