On a snowy day in January, Jimmy King went for a walk.
It was his birthday, and the streets of Philadelphia were empty due to the storm. As King trudged through the snow, a bit disappointed he wouldn’t get to celebrate with friends, he heard Olivia Dean’s “Man I Need” in the distance.
King pulled out his phone, and a dune buggy blasting the pop song roared toward him, gliding practically alone through downtown. “Philadelphia is the best city in the world and you can’t convince me otherwise,” King wrote as part of a caption. His videos of the dune buggy went viral on social media.
“That was kind of my coming out party,” King tells Front Office Sports.
The Philadelphia Union beat writer for Philly Sports Network with a day job as the manager of a medical cannabis dispensary has been walking around documenting his city for years. If the “Man I Need” video put him on the map as a local Philadelphia content creator, the World Cup launched King into another stratosphere.
Philadelphia hosted six World Cup matches this summer, including the roughly 100-degree Fourth of July round of 16 game between France and Paraguay.
King became a major figure in Philadelphia’s World Cup story through his frequent posts on X, formerly Twitter. He shared videos from match watch parties and concerts at the city’s 39-day Fan Fest. King posted Haitian fans celebrating before the match against Brazil, and supporters from both of those teams dancing together in the stands. He was with fans at the Rocky Statue, sheltering from rain on the concourse during a weather delay, and in the stands celebrating the final seconds of a win.
King’s video of Croatian fans crashing a couple’s wedding photos at City Hall picked up thousands of likes and over a million views on X. His content often found its way to larger platforms like ESPN and Men In Blazers.
Meg Kane, the CEO of Philadelphia Soccer 26, tells FOS that King captured “the pulse” of the fans and city during the tournament.
“What made Jimmy’s coverage so special is that he covered what we were doing, but he was able to cover everything we couldn’t have eyes on,” Kane says. “He was able to cover so much of that in-between that is where the magic was.”
Many popular World Cup social media personalities from Europe raised questions about who they were and whether they were being paid to push a specific agenda. The most popular one, a German tourist who never shows his face and goes simply by his first name, Freddy, recently went to the White House.
By contrast, King’s content came across as entirely genuine. That authenticity is driven by an element of home—King faced housing insecurity as a child, and as an adult became enamored with Philadelphia—as well as sport. Growing up primarily in upstate New York with “more cows than people,” King says living in a sports city like Philadelphia is a dream.
“These past 39 days were just me constantly tearing up, and being like, ‘Wow, this is everything I’ve ever dreamed of experiencing and more,’” King says.
Philadelphians embraced King’s coverage. Dozens of accounts on X thanked him throughout the tournament for capturing the World Cup in Philadelphia. Many including Kane said they were shocked this wasn’t his full-time job. When the tournament was over, there was an outpouring of support for the soccer writer, who had also written match recaps and local watch party compilations for Philly Sports Network during the World Cup.
Though King personally responded to just about every one of those messages, the most meaningful one came from the official account of the City of Philadelphia. On Tuesday, the city’s X account posted a message thanking the soccer writer and social media personality for his coverage during the tournament, calling him the “The (Jimmy) King of Philadelphia World Cup content.”
“If I could print that out and put it in a frame, I would, and I probably will, to be honest,” King says. “That is the highest honor I could ever receive, is knowing that the city I love and want to share every day also enjoys the way that I share stories about it.”
