The World Cup final may be a $700 ticket across the river at MetLife, but Brooklyn is running its own version on a giant screen in your neighborhood, for free. It’s called Brooklyn Mundial. Borough President Antonio Reynoso organized it, and it brings free public viewing of the tournament to a string of Brooklyn parks and bars with Telemundo on the feed.
The sites are spread on purpose, across parts of the borough where soccer is a first language. The series rolled into Coney Island at Maimonides Park for the United States against Australia, an event independently confirmed as free, and into Bushwick at a spot called El Santo for Brazil against Haiti. Still ahead, the program heads to Cypress Hills at a bar called Mr. Fire on June 25 for a doubleheader, Japan against Sweden followed by Turkey against the United States.
For most New Yorkers, the World Cup being in town is an abstraction happening behind ticket prices they will never pay. Putting the matches on a screen in a Brooklyn park or a neighborhood bar turns it back into what the rest of the planet experiences: a free event where you scream at the TV with strangers. Reynoso has pitched it as bringing the tournament to the people, and a public screening in Bushwick or Coney Island does that about as directly as anything can.
It also lands in the right neighborhoods. Bushwick, Cypress Hills, and the surrounding blocks are full of immigrant communities with deep ties to this tournament, including, this year, Haiti being back in a World Cup for the first time in over half a century. The free viewing of Brazil against Haiti in Bushwick lets a neighborhood watch its team on a big screen, together, at no cost.
So before you settle for watching alone on your phone, check the schedule. Brooklyn Mundial’s next confirmed stop is Cypress Hills at Mr. Fire on June 25, and the series moves around the borough through the tournament. Confirm the time and the free admission for the match you want, grab a few people, and go watch in a crowd in your own borough.
