By Geena Monahan—For the North Star Reporter
With World Cup matches underway at Gillette Stadium and soccer fans descending on the Boston region, a North Attleborough entertainment venue brought the tournament atmosphere closer to home.
Dozens of soccer fans gathered Friday, June 12, at Launch Family Entertainment for a World Cup watch party and ticket giveaway, where entrants in a raffle for front-row World Cup tickets waved the flags of all 48 participating nations before one local family walked away with seats to the Iraq-Norway match in Foxboro.
The event served as a kickoff celebration for the monthlong tournament and highlighted how excitement surrounding the World Cup has spread into the surrounding communities.
“We were brainstorming what we could do to get the community involved,” said Melissa Fernando, chief operating officer of Momentum Enterprises, which operates Launch. “We wanted people to know that we’re a place where they can come watch all the games.”
Fernando said about 700 people RSVP’d for the event, with roughly 100 visitors stopping in by mid-afternoon.
As part of the celebration, Launch installed the flags of all 48 World Cup nations around the exterior of the building. Fernando said the display will change throughout the tournament, with each country’s flag removed once that team is eliminated.
Among the fans in attendance was Lachlan Curran of Charlotte, North Carolina, who proudly held Scotland’s flag while preparing to attend Saturday’s Haiti-Scotland match at Gillette Stadium with his father, Joseph Curran.
The pair traveled to Massachusetts specifically for the World Cup.
“My mom is from Scotland, so we’ve always supported them,” Joseph Curran said.
Lachlan Curran, who plays travel soccer, recently attended a Norway national team training session in North Carolina and said he is rooting for both Scotland and the United States during the tournament.
“It was really cool. There were some big names there,” he said of the practice event.
Joseph Curran said the family regularly attends matches for Charlotte’s Major League Soccer club and has begun planning visits to additional World Cup host cities.
“He’s not a bandwagon fan,” Joseph Curran said of his son. “We have season tickets and go to a lot of games.”
General Manager Mauro Cortez Pacheco, a former collegiate soccer player at Assumption University who later played semi-professionally for Santa Cruz FC in Nashua, New Hampshire, said Launch hopes to become a gathering place for soccer fans throughout the tournament.
“We don’t just have trampolines,” Cortez Pacheco said. “We have a little bit of everything for everyone to enjoy.”
While matches play on large screens throughout the venue, visitors can also take advantage of attractions including bowling, mini golf, arcade games, axe-throwing, Formula One simulators and a full-service restaurant and bar.
“Having the World Cup around the area is great,” Cortez Pacheco said. “I’m rooting for Brazil. Seeing that Neymar (a prominent Brazilian player) is going to be part of it, I’m hoping they can make it all the way to the end.”
The evening’s biggest prize ultimately went to Jill Letourneau of Cumberland, Rhode Island, who won the raffle and will attend the June 16 Iraq-Norway match with her daughter, capping off a celebration designed to bring a small piece of the World Cup experience to North Attleborough.