By Michael A. Lough

The Sports Report

centralgasports@gmail.com

When the 1996 Olympics came to Atlanta, assorted cities benefitted from the massive investment.

Macon? Not so much.

But the city isn’t letting another worldwide event slip by without being seriously involved.

Macon is connected with both this month’s Club World Cup, and is likely to be connected with the even bigger World Cup in 2026.

Tuesday’s press conference video

“For the next several weeks, the Los Angeles Football Club will call Macon home,” Macon-Bibb mayor Lester Miller said Tuesday at a Mercer/Macon press conference at Mercer. “I want us to travel to Atlanta to help support them and cheer loudly as they begin their run for the Club World Cup.”

The time frame is more along the lines of several days that one of two Los Angeles’ entries in Major League Soccer will train before action begins in the Club World Cup.

The team will arrive in Macon next week, though few details were finalized in time for the announcement.

The expanded Club World Cup – tabbed by one media outlet as “a glittering curtain-raiser for the 2026 World Cup” - begins next Sunday, on June 15, and lasts until July 13.

The group stage lasts June 14-26, followed by the round of 16 from June 28-July 1.

A guide to the 2025 Club World Cup

The Club World Cup is about half the size of the World Cup, and includes teams from all six of FIFA’s confederations: UEFA (Europe), Concacaf (North and Central America), CONMEBOL (South America), OFC (Oceania), AFC (Asia) and CAF (Africa).
The United States will be represented by three MLS teams. The country was given an automatic berth as a host, and that went to Inter Miami and Lionel Messi.
Los Angeles FC beat Club America in a play-in for the final spot. LA joins Miami and the Seattle Sounders from the MLS, with Pachuca Mexico and Monterrey, Mexico also representing Concacaf as the Americas teams.
Atlanta is one of the host cities, along with Knoxville, Charlotte, Orlando, and Miami in the South.
Real Madrid has won the title five times. No U.S. team has won it.
Los Angeles is in group D with Esperance Sportive de Tunis (Tunisia), CR Flamengo (Brazil), and Chelsea FC (England).
The format has 32 teams in eight groups of four playing three group stage round-robin matches, with the top two teams from each group advancing.

More than 75 onlookers – from county commissioners to Mercer staffers to city and county officials as well as school and local supporters – attended the press conference at Mercer’s Heritage Plaza, in the middle of the University Center.

Miller, Mercer athletics director Jim Cole, Visit Macon president and CEO Gary Wheat, as well as Jay Markwalter, the statewide tourism director for the Georgia Department of Economic Development all spoke.

They mostly talked of tourism in general, and the impact of sports tourism in Georgia and locally. Markwalter noted that tourism in Georgia is good for $80 million and 463,000 jobs.

Wheat pointed out that sports tourism’s financial impact in Macon and Bibb County has grown from $2 million in 2017 to $12.5 million in 2024. That’s a figure that’ll soon be blown by, with an impact of $11 million already felt through five months of 2025.

The financial impact, though, of the visit from the Los Angeles Football Club won’t be overly substantial, serving more as a marketing opportunity and chance to brag, and perhaps set the table for a bigger duty next year.

Los Angeles beat Club America last weekend in a play-in for one of the final spots, and is currently sixth in the Western Conference of the MLS. The team opens Club World Cup play on June 16 at 3 p.m. at Mercedes-Benz Stadium against powerful London-based Chelsea FC of the Premier League, the top level of English soccer.

Miller ready for that opener.

“You know, thanks to exciting win this past Saturday night, they will be playing against Chelsea,” he said. “May have heard of them.

“This is our team, this is their time. Their focus on bringing community together through soccer street by street, block by block, one by one is perfect fit for here in Macon-Bibb County.”

A large donation from local soccer supporters Elsa and Forest Hutchinson – backers of major upgrades to the Stratford Academy soccer facility – led to seven-figure improvements at Mercer’s Betts Stadium, a facility that now has a World Cup-level turf.

Cole noted that FIFA officials have regularly consulted with Mercer about the turf, and are painstaking about maintenance. Mercer this week started even more fine-tuning of the field.

“Every field that participates in the World Cup has to be cut the same way,” he said. “The FIFA representative … they would measure it out, and mow this way, and measure it out, and mow this way.”

Every day that the team is here, four groundskeepers must be on site.

The process began around ago, Cole said, when it was brought up by his second in command Daniel Tate.

“I was like, ‘OK, why don’t you run with that?’” Cole said with a smile. “He kept running with it, and every month, we’d meet with Daniel. He and Gary Wheat were working side by side.”

The first notable news, though, with Macon and Mercer and the World Cup actually came months ago, and wasn’t initially part of Tuesday’s program, nor previously noted by Mercer or local officials until Miller brought it up at the end of the press conference.

In November, FIFA announced the potential training sites for 2026 World Cup teams, which has been expanded to a field of 62.

In April, Mercer made the list, and is one of three locations in Georgia that has been ruled sufficient to be a training site for a World Cup team. The Atlanta United Training Center and Kennesaw State are the two other state facilities approved so far. Other options in the Southeast: Tampa, Palm Beach, Orlando, Myrtle Beach, High Point, Greensboro, Chattanooga, Chapel Hill, Birmingham, and Boca Raton.

Being on the list doesn’t yet guarantee a team, but it’s a good start, and how things go during the Club World Cup visit by Los Angeles could easily clinch a connection to a billion-dollar event that is already perhaps the biggest sporting event on the planet.

The Club World Cup is bigger than in the past – 2001 was its first year – and is a feather in the local cap. A quality effort, though, likely leads to more and bigger feathers.

“I think it’ll shine a spotlight on Macon-Bibb County,” Miller said. “It’ll show people the value of sports to our community. I’ve been a baseball guy all my life, and my son played football here at Mercer.

“But soccer’s a great sport. I’ve been to Atlanta United games, I’ve been to see Chelsea myself. So, I’m excited about what’s coming to Macon.”