Inside an intimate soccer watch party in New York

For brand consultant and systemarosa co-founder Sam Herzog, soccer fandom begins around the table. Not in a stadium, not in a packed pub, and not necessarily in one of the increasingly popular grassroots watch parties taking over New York, but at home, where friends gather in the morning with coffee, pastries, bagels, and something to share.

“The public places where you can watch soccer are sort of makeshift. It’s mostly bars that open early, and they only have beer and pub food. Gathering at home means we can have a nice coffee, pastries or bagels… normal food to eat before noon while still enjoying the communion, collective gasps and cheers,” she explains.

An avid player who partakes in pickup games six days most weeks, Herzog came to soccer fandom in a very intentional way, choosing which club to support only after conducting a strict survey of the landscape. She wanted a club with an ethical code of conduct that would be easy to watch on American streaming platforms. Eventually, she landed on Crystal Palace FC, a south London club in the Premier League. As the lone Palace supporter in her local group of friends, Herzog thought it would be fun to turn a decade-long tradition of hosting dinner parties at her house into a reason to watch soccer and potentially make some converts.

“If the Eagles [Crystal Palace] win the Conference League and qualify for the Europa League next year, I think I’ll implement pancakes and Palace once a month at my house,” Herzog texts me, explaining how food is a crucial part of her match day experience on and off the pitch.

Around her table, the game becomes less like a broadcast and more like social glue: a way for teammates to extend their relationships off the pitch by sharing a meal. That is where the potluck comes in handy. Communal eating is universal, but the potluck, in its American sense, has its own code: bring what you can, feed who shows up, make the table together. It is casual, democratic, and a little chaotic. In the context of a soccer watch party, that structure feels perfectly fitting. The match provides a common language, but the food lets each guest put their own accent on it. From seafood paella to roasted Padrón peppers, the dishes Lucky Dinner Club founder and chef Gabrielle Macafee cooked for the group and curated for the Dazed League zine recipes booklet reflect her Spanish heritage.

In the case of photographer Ian Lam, food and soccer are inextricably part of his story. “My family ran a couple of restaurants growing up and I’ve played soccer since I was four. Usually if I am watching a match with some friends, it means we are grabbing some grub as well,” he says. 

A dish can carry family history, regional pride, nostalgia, humor, or pure convenience. It can also lower the barrier to entry. You do not have to know every player, chant, or transfer rumor to belong in the room. You can arrive with something homemade or picked up from a nearby corner shop and still contribute to the conversation.

For Herzog, that is the point. The game may be the reason to meet, but the meal becomes the mechanism. It turns spectators into guests, and guests into co-hosts. The pre-match cooking, the plates balanced on knees, the small interruptions, and the collective gasps are what make watching at home special. By the end of the match, the score almost feels secondary.

Across Europe and Latin America, soccer culture is often imagined as something that happens in the stadium. Fans bond over their favorite club, discuss the lineup, and share a pint before spending the next 90 minutes jumping, chanting, and praying over 11 sweaty players running across a 115×74-yard rectangle of grass. But in the US, where teams, leagues, and supporters are fragmented across states and time zones, watch parties have become a substitute terrace.

Generally hosted by grassroots collectives as a tool for community building, the watch party solves multiple problems at once: distance, cost, and a sense of belonging. Besides the vast geography of North America hindering stadium access, prohibitive ticket prices are pushing fans to seek alternative ways to recreate the camaraderie of supporting the same team in a shared setting.

In cities with large immigrant communities, events centered on soccer, food, and music have become essential to the sport’s growth. They feed the growing cultural appetite around the game and provide a space to celebrate the traditions of back home, especially during major tournaments. With a soccer-dominated summer approaching, research by global data analysts Nielsen found that only 25 per cent of fans plan to attend live games, suggesting that much of the tournament’s cultural life will unfold outside stadiums.

On the East Coast, New York has become a testing ground for a more progressive and inclusive soccer culture, one shaped as much by pickup groups, DJs, designers, and dinner tables as by traditional sports bars. From Brooklyn-based POC Futbol hosting a “48 countries, 48 women” event to celebrate an elite women’s final, to interdisciplinary studio Táctico 90’s various gatherings and hate watches at the newly reopened Football Cafe, many of the projects that have appeared over the past five years are itinerant and not tethered to one location.

Take Club Sensacional, for example, a buzzy project by French American creative director and former player Julien Bouguennec and Ecuadorian American artist Gogy Esparza. They launched it in 2022 during the first-ever winter world championship to create an authentic space where creative soccer fans could come together as a community. The format addresses the gap between how soccer is traditionally experienced in North America – often in dark, enclosed pubs where specific cultural nuances are muffled – and the multicultural essence of New York.

“We wanted to create a fully curated experience pairing each match with carefully chosen food and DJs,” shares Bouguennec, who grew up playing academy soccer and spent years working as a creative director at NYC creative-soccer institution Fly Nowhere.

The food angle is key to their success. For every watch party, the collective brings in specific partners to help recreate the atmosphere and energy of the country playing. If Mexico plays, there will be a taco stand and cumbia DJs. For their Copa Libertadores installment, showcasing the highest level of competition in South American club soccer, they set up a cookout with Argentinian asado, the country’s open-fire barbecue tradition, and a halftime show featuring a selection of Brazilian samba and pagode classics.

This expansive approach has made Club Sensacional watch parties go-to events to see and be seen at, popular among fans looking for a real experience while also drawing in people who are not yet fully into the game. Over four years of activity, friends have come to support their club or national team, then stayed for the atmosphere.

Together, these formats challenge the old hierarchy of fandom by resisting the idea that soccer culture has to be bought, seated, ticketed, or inherited. In the US, watch parties allow people to build their own traditions in bars, parks, community spaces, and living rooms. Not every gathering needs a flyer, a sponsor, or a packed pub, especially when the starting whistle blows in the morning.

That is what the watch party does best: it makes fandom feel less like something you consume and more like something you help create. As the US becomes the center of the soccer world this summer, the legacy of the tournament will not only be measured in packed stadiums, record ratings, or sold-out fan zones. It will also live in smaller rooms like Herzog’s, where people gather around a screen, bring something to the table, and make the game feel like home.