If you're on North America's West Coast, you're already well aware of the struggle of watching soccer competitions from overseas – multiple alarms, kickoffs that arrive well before the sun is up. But even with this year's slate of World Cup matches starting each day so far at 5 am, faithful fans are still gathering to watch with the San Jose Earthquakes at their home, Avaya Stadium.
During the day, the venue boasts some of the most beautiful sky views in all of MLS, featuring LOBINA, the world's largest outdoor bar, and a lawn surrounding it that makes for some pretty great picnicking. In the wee hours, though, it's still proven a pretty great camping spot to watch matches on a massive, outdoor screen.
World Cup watch party outside Avaya Stadium | @SJEarthquakes
And just because the sun isn't always up when the festivities get rolling, doesn't mean the energy stays low. On the contrary, the Quakes' music selectors have been warming up the crowd to take them from night into day.
It also helps, of course, that Quakes fans are cheering on some of their own team's favorite players in the competition. Both Harold Cummings and Anibal Godoy are proudly representing their club in San Jose as they play on Panama's national team.
Watch party playlist
Here's what the Quakes crew is playing on heavy rotation as their World Cup watch parties, and the team's MLS season, continues. Check out sjearthquakes.com for details on the next events at Avaya.
What are the most requested artists or songs by your fans?
Fans do not generally request songs, but our players do. They mostly ask for top 40 and rap to be played during warmups; Drake and Rihanna are two popular requests.
What's a staple song you always play?
For Quakes games we always play "Never Say Die" by the Old Firm Casuals. They wrote it for us and we play it to let fans know that we are about to kick off.
How do you keep the mood upbeat at halftime if a game is tense?
We always play pre-made pump up highlight videos at halftime with a rock music soundtrack that have a "we still got this" message. We also play a lot of songs like "Battle Royale (VIP remix)" by Apashe to get the crowd awake again.
How do you balance out a mix of old and new music for your crowds?
Since we have a ton of theme games we will play music that matches the theme. For our Retro Night this past May 19, we only played 1980s music and nothing else.
We also play a lot of E-40 and local music since the Bay Area loves its local artists. We also keep in mind that there are a lot of families that come to our games and keep it appropriate for them. We just have a huge variety that we go with.
