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World Cup tourists are coming to L.A.
for the soccer, but theyre staying for the $21 smoothies and Double-Doubles.
As the last Los Angeles FIFA World Cup event ended Friday, soccer fans were eating like locals and famous chains from the region were cashing in.
In the weeks that L.A.
has hosted the World Cup, international soccer enthusiasts have flocked to big brands from the area, often in large groups wearing their countries jerseys.
It is a phenomenon seen at many of the host cities.
In Dallas, giant gas station Buc-ees is the main attraction.
For people visiting New Jersey, deli shops have been a hot ticket.
In L.A., the place to be between matches was Erewhon.
Thirsty international sports fans gathered for pictures outside different Erewhons, wandered their aisles smiling, and, of course, picked up pricey smoothies.
While Erewhon would not comment on its business, mobility data company Arity, which uses phone data to track consumers, said Erewhon visits at the outlets around SoFi Stadium were quadruple what they were a week earlier on June 12, the day of the U.S.
national soccer teams opening match there.
Arity looked at what stores people visited within a 10-mile radius of SoFi that day and also found surges in visitors to nearby El Pollo Loco and Trader Joes.
Locals have spotted groups of people in Korea jerseys huddled together, trying to decide what to order at In-N-Out.
Some complained on social media that international tourists at Trader Joes were buying up all the mini canvas tote bags.
Soon after the Belgium vs.
Spain quarterfinal ended Friday, the In-N-Out near SoFi had a long line of soccer fans stretching out the door in bright red and yellow and black jerseys and matching striped hats and scarves.
One of the workers said he had to explain spread and animal style to foreign football fans.
I didnt know this place existed, a fan from Romania said while waiting in line.
Los Angeles and other cities and states that have hosted the event need the soccer fans to spend money to make the event worth all the time, effort and money it requires.
A rosy 2024 report projected the World Cup could bring more than $800 million to the L.A.
region as 180,000 people converge on the area to sleep, eat and spend.
There were early concerns people werent turning up for the event because of the high ticket prices and the difficulty of obtaining visas for citizens of some countries.
However, at least for some L.A.
hotels, there was a surge of last-minute visitors which pushed up occupancy and room rates.
While sports fans are not in the region to shop, they do make time for it.
World Cup customer spending is also apparent in beer sales.
Andrew Heritage, the chief economist at the Beer Institute said beer purchases at entertainment and attractions in L.A.
outside of World Cup spaces were up around 10% from normal.
That tells me that fans in the L.A.
area have decided to extend their stay and take in all the other things that the area has to offer, rather than just the match itself, he said.
On social media, the purpose of these shoppers is clear: grab a quick souvenir or local specialty and take a selfie.
The data from Arity suggests that fans are very efficient when they spend at local spots, diving in, getting what they want and getting out as soon as possible, said Jeff Schlitt, a director at the company.
Normally youre there for an hour.
Theyre going to be there for 15, 18 minutes, he said.
Why is that? Because they were purpose-driven shoppers.
For some travelers, the more popular American chains arent unfamiliar.
But some of the native L.A.
fare still comes as a surprise.
As one Belgium-Spain matchgoer from the Netherlands stood taking a picture of the In-N-Out sign after the game, he said hed never had a burger like the one hed just tried.
We only have McDonalds and Burger King, he said.
Its way better.
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles! The face of baseball will not be at Tuesdays All-Star Game.
Shohei Ohtani was scratched from his start on Friday as the Los Angeles Dodgers said he will also miss the Midsummer Classic with what the team called left knee irritation.
Ohtani, for obvious reasons, has become an All-Star Game fixture.
He has earned the honor in each of the past five seasons and made his first start in 2021.
The two-way phenom is on his way to winning his fifth MVP award in his last six seasons as he is hitting .290 with a .939 OPS and pitching to a minuscule 1.79 ERA, the second-lowest in the sport among pitchers with 80-plus innings.
His OPS is also the seventh-best mark in the league.
The Dodgers said Ohtani will be the teams designated hitter up until the break, but he will have some interventions on his knee to put him in the best position for the second half of the season.
Ohtani dealt with knee issues earlier in the season.
It is certainly a big hit for the game as the other face of the sport, Aaron Judge, will miss the game due to a fractured rib that has kept him out since late May.
DODGERS WILL AGAIN VISIT WHITE HOUSE TO CELEBRATE WORLD SERIES CHAMPIONSHIP, OFFICIAL SAYS Ohtani hit 99 home runs combined in 2024 and 2025, leading the National League with a 1.025 OPS in that span.
Ohtani did not pitch in 2024 after elbow surgery but returned to the bump last year and owned a 2.87 ERA and 11.9 K/9, a figure he also put up in 2022 that led the American League.
The Japanese Babe Ruth is the only player in MLB history to have 300-plus plate appearances and 40-plus innings in six separate seasons (Ruth only did it twice and never stole 50 bases), and he has more than excelled at both.
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP Ohtani is not hitting like he has in the past, but certainly the best pitching performance of his career will make up for it.
He only has 20 homers and 56 RBI this season.
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If Mikel Merino is sleeping, please dont wake him.
If the last week has been a dream, hed just as soon keep dreaming.
Because on Friday, for the second time in five days, Merino came off the bench for the final five minutes of a World Cup knockout game and scored the winning goal, the latest lifting Spain to a 2-1 victory over Belgium and into next weeks semifinal against France in Arlington, Texas.
Not even in my wildest dreams could I have imagined whats happening right now, right? Merino said in Spanish.
Honestly, its crazy.
How crazy? Merino has played less than 10 minutes in the last two games and has two goals.
Hes taken four shots in the World Cup and put two of them in the back of the net, the first in stoppage time to beat Portugal in the Round of 16 and in the 88th minute Friday to beat Belgium in a quarterfinal and extend Spains unbeaten to streak to 36 games.
I dont really even know what to say.
I still cant quite believe it, Merino said.
Yet Spains final substitution, which brought on Merino in the 86th minute, wasnt the only one that figured heavily in the result.
Fifteen minutes earlier Belgian coach Rudi Garcia sent backup goalkeeper Senne Lammens on for Thibaut Courtois not by choice, by necessity.
The dropoff in talent wasnt great Lammens started 32 times for Manchester United this season but the difference in experience was.
Courtois was playing in his 21st World Cup game, second-most all-time, and he had been brilliant up to then.
But he tweaked a muscle making a save minutes earlier and dropped to the turf just before the second-half hydration break.
After being attended to by the teams trainers, he tried to continue but couldnt, eventually hobbling to the sideline and collapsing on the bench in tears.
We didnt want his injury to get worse.
Thats why I subbed him off, Garcia said.
Its part and parcel of high-level sport.
You need to be concentrated, 100% focused, and need to be able to perform.
I did not want to put players on the pitch who were not 100%.
The margin between Belgium and Spain, after all, is a small one, even if the teams took completely different routes to the quarterfinal.
Spain, which hadnt gone past the Round of 16 in a World Cup since 2010 when it won its only title, had gone a record six games and 609 minutes without allowing a World Cup goal, dating to the group stage of the last tournament four years ago.
You could binge watch two seasons of Abbott Elementary in that time.
But if Spain, the reigning European champion, and goalkeeper Unai Simon were the immovable objects, Belgium, playing in the quarterfinals for the third time in four World Cups, was an unstoppable force.
With 12 goals in the last three games, it entered the quarterfinals with the third-most goals in the tournament.
And no team had taken more shots.
Spain struck first, with Fabian Ruiz giving La Roja a 1-0 lead with his first goal of the tournament in the 30th minute.
The sequence started with Pedro Porro sending a cross into the box for Dani Olmo, whose shot was parried away by Courtois.
But Ruiz pounced on the rebound and deflected a shot off defender Timothy Castagne and into the back of the net.
In any other game of this tournament, that would have been enough for Simon.
But not against Belgium, which ended Spains shutout streak in the 41st minute on a brilliant header from Charles De Keterlaere, who shielded Pau Cubarsi with his body and one-hopped a Castagne cross past a flat-footed Simon for his third goal in two games.
The record and the milestones are there, Spanish coach Luis de la Fuente said of his goalkeepers record streak.
Its been decades since the last record was set.
And perhaps somebody will break the clean-sheet record.
But its going to be many, many years before that happens.
Belgium opened the game up a bit when Garcia brought Romelu Lukaku, the countrys all-time leading scorer, on at the hour mark.
But Courtois was called to make two saves in the next three minutes and came up lame after the second.
Shorty after he came off, De la Fuente summoned Merino over.
He didnt say much to me, Merino said.
He told me I was coming in as the No.
10.
And then, as the game was coming to an end, he told me I was incredible.
Those are the only two things he said to me.
The first shot Lammens faced came moments later, when Cubarsi put a one-hop shot on goal from distance.
The keeper dove to his right to stop it with both hands, but the ball skipped just before it reached he and Lammens had trouble with the rebound, pushing it toward the edge of the six-yard box for Merino, who tapped it in.
Unfortunately, to beat a team of this caliber, you need luck on your side, Garcia, the Belgian coach, said.
And the stars didnt align for us.
So while Belgium goes home, Spain goes to Texas for Tuesdays semifinal with France, the only team in the world ranked ahead of it.
Ever since the World Cup started, everyone has been waiting for this match, Spanish wunderkind Lamine Yamal said.
Ive been really looking forward to it.
To me, theyre the two best teams in the World Cup.
If anyone can take on France with confidence, its us.
Especially if Merino keeps dreaming.
Sports editor Iliana Limon Romero contributed to this story.
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles! Oba Femi and Brock Lesnars feud will come to a head at SummerSlam in August, and the showdown has the potential to be WWEs match of the year.
Femi beat Lesnar at WrestleMania 42 and led to The Beast Incarnate deciding to retire at least for a moment at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas.
Lesnar made a dramatic return a few weeks later, challenging and beating Femi at Clash in Italy.
COMPLETE PRO WRESTLING COVERAGE ON FOX NEWS DIGITAL At SummerSlam, Femi and Lesnar will do battle inside a Hell in a Cell.
WWE Hall of Famer John Bradshaw Layfield called the next meeting between Femi and Lesnar a generational matchup.
Ive never seen anything like Oba well, I have.
Ive seen Brock, he told Fox News Digital.
Its very much the carbon copy of Brock coming in.
Brock coming in was like, oh my God, who is this guy? The guy can even talk, and hes gonna be one of the biggest stars in wrestling.
Not only could he talk, hes a really smart guy.
Brock became one of the biggest draws in professional wrestling.
He came one of the biggest draws in UFC.
Its an unbelievable story, and now you got somebody who can rival that character.
This Oba Femi comes out with the silly little walk he does.
Everyone kinda does it, its like The Bushwackers.
But the whole arena does it.
I was in Vegas and I didnt want to go to the matches and deal with the traffic and deal with the backstage area, and so I kinda just watched it in a sports bar.
I stood in the back where nobody could recognize me, and as soon as Oba came out, the entire sports bar was sitting there doing that Oba Femi dance.
The guy is just unbelievably over.
I really think that somewhere in the NFL this year, youre going to see an entire NFL arena doing this dance.
Youre gonna have somebody like Saquon Barkley or King (Derrick Henry) or some of these guys do this dance, and its infectious.
Once one of them does, one of these great running backs or wide receivers, or somebody scores a touchdown, thats when I think youre gonna see entire arenas doing it.
I just think Oba Femi is lightning in a bottle and Brock has always been that way.
This is, to me, a generational matchup.
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP SummerSlam will take place on Aug.
1 and 2 at U.S.
Bank Stadium in Minneapolis.
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