AUTHORS
|
TESSA TROWBRIDGE |
KYLE DEL ROSARIO |
LINEN YU |
When you design brand experiences for a living, you just can’t help yourself...
We didn't go to the U.S. Soccer House as critics. We went as fans — three OBE-ers chasing the World Cup energy to an iconic building on Windward Ave in Venice Beach, where Bank of America had built a three-week home base for U.S. soccer culture: a watch zone, a gallery, a shop, and a rotating cast of brand activations from Michelob Ultra to Jim Beam to Chobani.
But once an environmental designer, always an environmental designer. We couldn't help clocking the sightlines, the signage, the queue logic — and one theme in particular that kept surfacing as we compared notes afterward: where's the shade, where's a place to sit, and where's the water? It came up often enough across the day that it felt worth calling out on its own, because it's a good reminder that physical comfort on a hot day is part of the guest journey, running underneath whatever activation is built on top of it.
The wins and opportunities are both worth talking about if you build experiences for a living. So, what started as internal field notes shared with our own team turned into the breakdown below. Beat by beat, we're calling out what worked, and, ngl, what we'd tweak.
The Journey, in Five Beats
The event moved guests through a clear sequence:
/ SIGN-UP + ARRIVAL / WATCH ZONE / FOOD + BEVERAGE / GALLERY WALK / BRAND ACTIVATIONS /
On paper, that's a smart structure — it gives every partner brand a "beat" in the story instead of competing for attention all at once. In practice, execution varied from beat to beat, leading to a bit of inconsistency. Here's how each of the five held up.
1. Sign-Up + Arrival: a warm welcome, with room to grow
/ WHAT THEY GOT RIGHT
There was real thinking built into entry. Turning RSVP into becoming a "U.S. Soccer House Insider" gave the event a membership feel before anyone had even arrived, and the ŌURA truck stationed along the line — handing out water bottles, towels, and branded bags — showed someone had considered the experience of waiting in line.
/ WHAT WE'D TWEAK
The opportunity here is in scale. Entry was first-come, first-served (rather than being tied to the advanced registration), with wait times running anywhere from one to nearly two hours — in direct sun, with minimal shade, on a hot day, and no seating along the line. Building out that same welcoming instinct — more shade, more seating, a ticketed time slot tied to the Insider RSVP — would let a two-hour wait feel as considered as the twenty-minute one already does. A digital confirmation with a QR code would also give staff and guests alike a clean, effortless way to check in.
Why it matters beyond this one event: arrival is the first data point a guest uses to calibrate their expectations for everything that follows. A queue with generous shade, clear wayfinding, and a smooth confirmation loop sets an exceptional tone before the experience has even started. If there's one takeaway we'd hand any client, it's this: invest as much in the experience before the experience as you do in the finale.
2. Watch Zone: right energy, with room to sharpen the geography
/ WHAT THEY GOT RIGHT
Once inside, the courtyard Watch Zone had real atmosphere — a DJ booth, two screens playing simultaneous matches, a crowd that wanted to be there. That's the hardest thing to manufacture in experiential work, and it was present.
/ WHAT WE'D TWEAK
The opportunity here is in legibility: a bit more wayfinding, a floor plan guests wouldn't have to reverse-engineer on the fly, and circulation paths designed around the seating and screen sightlines rather than through them would let that great energy spread even further. Larger screens, or a few additional ones, would also help the viewing experience match the scale of the crowd around them. And there's a natural next step on the heat front, too — a bit more seating and shade near that stepped, bleacher-style section would give guests who'd already been standing in the sun a comfortable place to land.
Given that this is an open-air courtyard on a public street, some of this is a venue challenge as much as a design one. Just remember that a crowd that's excited and knows where to stand, sit, and look next will always feel more energized, and be given a sense that they belong there.
3. Food + Beverage: transparency is a design decision
/ WHAT THEY GOT RIGHT
The Michelob Ultra bar and the House's own food counter had the ingredients for a strong F+B program, including thoughtful bilingual signage — a genuine bright spot worth calling out.
Free protein and caffeine drinks alongside alcoholic options meant the beverage program actually considered the full range of who was in the crowd — under 21, sober, or just not drinking at 2pm on a Tuesday.
/ WHAT WE'D TWEAK
There's an opportunity to build on that same inclusive thinking with clearly visible water stations, which on a day this hot would be the one free, no-brand-required amenity guests are actively looking for.
4. Gallery Walk: strong material, passive delivery
/ WHAT THEY GOT RIGHT
The U.S. Soccer History Gallery was certainly a highlight — real artifacts, signed jerseys, a genuine sense of occasion.
/ WHAT WE'D TWEAK
Given how strong the source material was (true U.S. Soccer history), there was an opportunity to engage guests and draw them in. As we put it at the time: we saw the vision, it just needed more interactivity. A tap-to-reveal moment, an AR overlay, or even a simple "vote on your favorite jersey" mechanic can convert passive viewing into shareable and memorable interaction.
5. Brand Activations: this is where it got genuinely fun
/ WHAT THEY GOT RIGHT
This is the part of the day worth the most applause.
Jim Beam's room — airbrush tattoos, a photo backdrop, custom cocktails — had a self-contained, high-energy identity of its own. The community mural, filled in by attendees over the full three-week run, is a genuinely smart mechanic: it turns a static wall into a living record of the event, and it gets stronger every day the activation is open.
The face-sticker station deserves its own mention as a small, smart idea: letting fans literally wear the U.S. Soccer identity is a natural, low-cost way to turn every attendee into a walking piece of brand content — everyone in that corner was serving looks, and it was one of the more instantly "Instagrammable" corners of the house.
Upstairs, the second-floor shop and activation area (custom jerseys, dog tags, a Truly wall) had good ideas of its own, and the Bank of America bracelet activation — timed sessions, a paper chart for guests to select charms — was a nice, tactile touch.
/ WHAT WE'D TWEAK
Jim Beam's room was 100/10 on concept — but a bit more restocking support on the free-shot line would fix what was, in our original notes, a genuinely mid execution on that one detail.
There's also an easy opportunity to make the mural even stronger by posting the guidelines — that only artistic contributions, not written messages, would remain — right at the paint station, so every guest knows the rules of participation going in.
Upstairs, a few opportunities would round out the experience: clearer pricing on jerseys and customization, some acoustic treatment for a room already prone to echo, and a visible elevator, which is worth considering for any future activation thinking about accessibility. Promoting the bracelet activation's session times more visibly would also help even more guests find their way to it before slots fill.
The Big Picture
None of this changes the headline, and it's basically what we said in our own notes at the time: crowded, but the layered experiences and interactive moments made it worth it.
It was a memorable afternoon, and the crowd's energy carried a lot of rough edges that a quieter event couldn't have gotten away with. That's a real credit to the brand and the sport. It's also worth remembering that U.S. Soccer House was built on a public boardwalk over three weeks of variable weather and within FIFA's and multiple sponsors' brand guardrails. It was a fundamentally harder brief than a single-day, single-brand build with a clean sheet of paper.
A lot of what we're highlighting as opportunities—queue flow, wayfinding, and acoustic treatment—is the kind of thing that's easiest to invest in when a venue, timeline, or budget has more flexibility. None of it suggests the team didn't know better.
If we're pulling out the lessons that travel beyond this one event, they're these:
/ Design the wait not just the destination.
The first twenty minutes of any activation shape how forgiving guests are for the next two hours.
/ Shade, seating, and water are load-bearing.
On an outdoor build in warm weather, environmental comfort is part of the experience's structural integrity, and it's worth budgeting and staffing for as one.
/ Transparency build trust.
Easily visible prices, posted rules, and clear confirmations build trust from the very first interaction.
/ Inclusive doesn't just mean accessible.
It means considered. A drink menu with options for every kind of guest is a small thing that reads as a big thing.
/ Living installations just keep getting better.
Like the mural, they get even better every day they're open. Especially when guests know the rules going in.
/ The richest content deserves the most interactivity.
Pairing the two is the natural next step.
We came away better fans of the sport and, honestly, better designers for having watched it all unfold in real time. That's the value of getting your team out from behind the desk — the best briefs for the next activation often start with three people standing in a two-hour line, sweating, and taking notes.
