Copa City: When the excitement of football begins long before the ball starts rolling

Fan zones, marketing, and urban logistics come together in a challenge that’s as demanding as it is original.

Update: Jul 1st, 2026 00:01 CEST

The World Cup fever makes us want to experience soccer at every possible level, and video games can be a powerful way to do just that. If you’ve attended a Fan Fest in your city, watched content about it, and thought you could do a better job organizing it, you may not fully grasp what you’re getting into. Management games often exist within a very specific niche, where decision-making and efficient structures are everything—but Copa City presents a refreshing twist by focusing on everything that happens before the first whistle blows.

Copa City is a simulation game centered on managing all the logistics behind a high-level soccer match—and everything that surrounds it. Rather than putting you in control of a club, the game places you in charge of the company responsible for orchestrating the entire event. From promoting the match and managing Fan Zones to fulfilling agreements, organizing stadium areas, and handling countless behind-the-scenes details, the scope quickly becomes clear.

The excitement before the game

One of the first major systems you’ll engage with is the development of Fan Zones. These are divided into three audience types: families, casual fans, and Ultras. Each group has distinct needs—food, entertainment, safety, or amenities—which you must satisfy through food stands, mini-games, photo spots, and first-aid services. These Fan Zones help spread pre-match excitement across the city districts surrounding the stadium.

Each district offers specific areas you can purchase and adapt into Fan Zones, but logistics play a crucial role. Zones must be connected via public transportation, forcing you to design a fully integrated urban network. Within each Fan Zone, you’re free to arrange layouts efficiently—creating paths, placing decorations, adding structures, setting up information boards, and even installing stages with large screens for live viewing. All of this must be balanced against practical constraints such as funding, electricity, and manpower.

Copa City: When the excitement of football begins long before the ball starts rolling

Volunteers are another key resource. You can recruit them by establishing recruitment centers at Fan Fests, but as days pass, demand increases. Progression is structured around daily cycles, during which you level up and unlock new items. This reinforces two important mechanics: careful financial management—since daily expenses and income are tracked—and constant attention to missions and objectives. At times, you may be asked to prioritize family-friendly activities, but neglecting food options can quickly drain your profits.

Each district also features unique bonuses that can support your strategy. Hotels help attract more fans, bars boost satisfaction, and police stations improve security—small details that can make a meaningful difference.

Beyond the local map, the world map plays a crucial role in marketing. You can run targeted campaigns, such as advertising to Arsenal fans in the United States who prefer attending matches with their families. These campaigns last a day and can significantly increase attendance, drawing fans not just to the match but to the broader Fan Zone experience.

And the best team takes the field…

The stadium itself is another major layer of management. Before each match, you control seating arrangements—deciding how many stands to open, which types of fans to seat, and where they should go. But it doesn’t stop there. You can add mascots, assign security teams, and fine-tune entrances depending on expected crowd behavior.

Inside the stadium, you manage food and beverage areas, VIP sections, and even team locker rooms. Just like with Fan Zones, staffing is essential. Without enough personnel, even the best-designed layout can fail. Pre-match preparation extends all the way to the pitch itself, where you’ll need to maintain the field and can even apply decorative grass patterns.

Not everything is as easy as you might expect

Like any good simulation and management game, Copa City features a tutorial that provides the basic information you need to understand how to manage the various aspects of its gameplay. The tutorial doesn’t provide all the information, so you’ll have to use your intuition to figure out how to complete certain missions as you go along. This becomes apparent as you play and the days go by, with certain missions popping up out of nowhere. Although some of these are optional missions that don’t affect your progress, you may end up being penalized if you aren’t quick enough to figure out what to do to complete them.

As for the visuals, Copa City has good graphics—or rather, what you’d expect from a simulation game like this. You can see fans walking down the streets in detail, along with everything that’s happening at the fan fests. The menu system is functional, though it would benefit from a glossary or in-game encyclopedia to clarify overlooked mechanics or terminology.

Along with this, some characters guide you throughout the game, giving you tips or new missions to help everything go as smoothly as possible. In this regard, I noticed that the voice acting and subtitles often didn’t match up. It’s a minor detail that doesn’t cause you to miss any ideas or anything like that—it’s just a minor detail.

Another highlight is the use of licenses. Although very limited, the inclusion of licenses for teams like Arsenal, Bayern Munich, Olympique de Marseille, and Flamengo—as well as real cities—adds a detail that, while it may sound a bit out of place in the mix, places us in settings and with teams that, in most cases, are recognizable. Undoubtedly, this is a detail that could be more striking if expanded upon.