Wichita World Cup fans were poised to celebrate, then the city’s screen went dark | Opinion
The first rule of a throwing a World Cup watch party is you don’t turn off the TV until the game is over.
The city of Wichita broke that rule, disappointing about 1,000 or so soccer fans who came out to Naftzger Park on Tuesday night to watch Mexico eliminate Ecuador 2-0, to advance to whatever soccer’s version of the Sweet 16 is.
It was a jarring end to an evening of happy celebration, said former Sedgwick County Commissioner Sarah Lopez, a Mexican-American who was at the park to cheer for Mexico.
“It was really, you know, a great experience,” she said. "It was stoppage time (it’s a soccer thing). There’s like two minutes left, and you could tell everybody was starting to get kind of hyped up, and you know, making more noise and starting to cheer. And then, with like two minutes left, it just completely turned off.”
Needless to say, people were upset. Out came the cell phones to watch the final minute or so on many small screens rather than one big one.
“It was just kind of anticlimactic, which is unfortunate for such a big game,” Lopez said. “It’s been like 40 years since we’ve progressed to the round of 16, so it’s a really big deal — it’s even been called ‘the curse.’ So it was just disappointing that we didn’t get to see the last couple of minutes and have that celebration that I think everybody was ready to have at the end of that game.”
Hopefully it won’t be their last chance to party. Mexico’s next opponent is England, scheduled for 7 p.m. on Sunday. And it will be shown at Naftzger Park.
City spokeswoman Megan Lovely said what happened Tuesday is that the big screen is on a timer that automatically shuts it off nightly at 11 p.m. The video board is managed by a company called Scala Digital Signage Hardware, which also installed it, and it’s run remotely.
The video feed to the board should have overridden the timer, but didn’t, Lovely said. “It’s not supposed to turn off if there’s an active broadcast.”
The next World Cup watch party is tonight, when the USA will face Bosnia-Herzegovina in the Round of 32. Game time is 7 p.m.
Lovely said the Parks Department is working with Scala to make sure the screen doesn’t go dark again.
“We feel really sad for the people who were there watching (Tuesday), and obviously we want it to be a good experience for the people,” she said.
I don’t want to be too hard on the city. The higher tech gets, the harder it crashes.
Ironically, at this very moment, I’m writing this column in Microsoft Word because our news production system is taking a break, so I can sympathize. I’ll get this up on the website as soon as I can.
Really, the city was probably pretty lucky the shutdown happened when it did.
Mexico dominated the game and a 2-0 lead (there’s not a lot of scoring in soccer) is pretty much insurmountable with only two minutes left, so nobody missed a finish for the ages.
It should have been over long before 11 anyway, but the start was delayed an hour by lightning in Mexico City, where the game was played.
“It’s just a little, excuse the pun, but a perfect storm of things going wrong,” Lovely said.
Beyond that, I have nothing to add but this: Viva Mexico! Buena suerte contra Inglaterra!
This story was originally published July 1, 2026 at 5:18 PM.
