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The town of Foxborough, Mass., officially ended its fight with World Cup organizers on Tuesday night by green lighting the entertainment license FIFA needs to hold seven World Cup matches at Gillette Stadium this summer.
Foxborough’s Select Board unanimously voted to award FIFA the license.
The move was largely expected after Foxborough made a deal last week with the local World Cup host committee, Boston 26, to pay the town’s $7.8 million security bill upfront. The deal is backed by Kraft Sports and Entertainment, the sports company run by Patriots owner Robert Kraft, who also owns Gillette Stadium.
Foxborough demanded a guarantee that it wouldn’t be on the hook for the security costs, insisting the town wasn’t part of the deal to bring the World Cup to New England. The board set a March 17 deadline to sort out the security deal, or else it wouldn’t approve FIFA’s license.
During a meeting on Feb. 17, organizers could not tell the Select Board who would cover the town’s security bill. At the next meeting on March 3, members of the board accused the host committee of “trying to nickel and dime” the town’s police and fire chiefs, and said they would deny FIFA the license “if we have to.” In the days following that meeting, the groups exchanged dueling statements to the press that added fuel to the fire.
The roughly 19,000 person town, Boston 26, and KSE announced their deal on March 11, and said the town would not take on any costs related to the World Cup. “I want to personally thank KSE and Robert Kraft for his involvement in bringing the funding concerns to a resolution,” Select Board chair Bill Yukna said in a statement.
Boston 26, along with hosts in the 10 other U.S. World Cup cities, is waiting for hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding for security. Though the funds were approved by the Department of Homeland Security last week, several stakeholders told FOS on Monday that they still don’t have the funding. Some officials said they expect it to come in soon, while others said they don’t have a timeline to expect the money.
The cities are collectively anticipating $625 million earmarked in President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act last summer, plus $250 million set aside for policing drones at the World Cup and America250 festivities. The funds did not arrive by an internal Jan. 30 deadline, and have been held up amid the partial Department of Homeland Security shutdown.
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