Cities: Skylines Football Stadium Guide (Uses + Policies)

Football Stadium (Match Day)
DLC	Match Day
Building Type	Unique Building
Category	Football
Build Cost	₡200,000
Upkeep Cost	₡4,000/week
Milestone Required	Tiny Town
Entertainment Value	150
Noise Pollution	100
Visitor Capacity	750

The Football Stadium is an interactive unique building added in the free Match Day DLC.

This building introduces the football match game mechanic into the game, which gives your city its own football club and regular games. The building also displays a football match animation whenever there’s a match on.

The inside of the stadium during a match “day”, which in fact lasts for about one in-game month.

Note: This building is different than the Stadium (level 6 vanilla unique building) and Sports Arena (leisure and tourism European unique building).

To unlock the Match Day Football Stadium, you’ll simply need to have the Match Day DLC installed & then reach the Tiny Town milestone.

If you don’t have the Match Day DLC yet, you can simply search for “Match Day” on the Steam Store (or find it here) and download it free of charge.

Once you’ve got the DLC and have reached the Tiny Town milestone in your city, you’ll be able to build the Football Stadium from its own tab in the Unique Buildings menu.

The Football Stadium gets its own tab in the Unique Buildings menu when you have the DLC.

How Football Matches Work

Football matches will take place in your stadium every 48 weeks, and take a little over one in-game month from start to finish.

You don’t need to do anything in order for the stadium to start having matches.

Click on the stadium itself to bring up information on upcoming and past matches.

Info about your team’s next match and 5 most recent ones.

Your city’s own team will be playing teams from other cities.

Here you can see when your team is playing next and which city they’re up against.

Winning a match gives you a large cash prize.

Note: Even though the prizes are large, don’t forget that the stadium costs a whopping ₡4,000 per week in upkeep.

Fortunately you will also make some money back through ticket sales as well.

Managing Your Club

The football stadium’s info panel also allows you to manage your stadium and club.

Use the slider to adjust the ticket prices. This is set to 30 by default; you can bring it all the way down to 20 or up to 40.

The ticket price slider.

There are also three policies specific to your match day football stadium that you can toggle on and off from the same panel.

We’ll briefly cover each of these policies in detail below.

The three toggle options (from top): Come One, Come All, Increased Security, and Subsidized Youth.

Policy #1: Come One, Come All

This makes public transport free for the 33-day duration of each match. This makes it more convenient for visitors to attend the matches.

According to the tooltip, having more visitors increases your team’s chances of winning.

There is no fee for implementing this policy.

Of course, that means about a month of losing out on however much you normally make from public transport.

Policy #2: Increased Security

This hires security personnel to patrol the area to keep crime rates low during match days.

This costs ₡500/week to implement.

While this is a costly option, you’ll want to switch it on if you get a “High Crime Rate” warning at your stadium.

That’s because the prevalence of crime can get upcoming matches canceled. That means losing out on ticket sales and possible winnings.

Alternatively, you could also try just having a police station right next to the stadium (which will help the entire nearby area and not just the stadium itself.)

Policy #3: Subsidized Youth

This policy is related to money spent on resources for training your city’s budding footballers, which should eventually lead to a more successful team.

This costs a massive ₡9000 per week, so perhaps it’s only a good idea if your city is seriously flush with cash—and your team is on a massive losing streak!

Visitors and Ticket Sales

Football matches draw a large crowd of both tourists and locals, both during the match and in the two or three months leading up to it.

The football stadium’s info panel shows you the number of visitors currently at the stadium.

The text readability isn’t the best, but the visitor count is on the top left of the panel.

This is a great way to increase your city’s tourism, which can help your income and help you unlock some unique buildings that are related to a certain amount of tourists.

As an example:

This can help your progress if you’re trying to unlock the Expo Center or Cinema, both of which require a certain number of tourists to visit your city.

There will also be a small number of visitors at the stadium on days when there isn’t a match on.

Club Customizations

You can customize your club color by clicking on the shirt icon. This will bring up a color picker.

Changing the club color

You can also change the name of the stadium by clicking on the name in its info panel.

Changing the Stadium name.

The name of your team, on the other hand, is dictated by your city name (i.e., Your City FC).

Note: Changing your city name will automatically change the football team name to match.

To change your city name, click on the City Info icon near the bottom of your screen, and then click on the city name in the pane.

Changing the city name

Football Stadium Placement & Managing Traffic

While this building is great for tourism, the large number of football fans during and near match days can cause traffic problems for your city if you’re not prepared.

Here’s how to make sure the matches don’t interfere with your city running smoothly:

Tip #1: Place It Away from Your Residences

The football stadium is a very noisy building, producing 100 noise pollution.

Make sure to keep it away from your residential areas!

Pay attention to the red noise pollution radius when placing your football stadium.

Tip #2: Provide Local Public Transport

It’s really important to have local public transport near your stadium.

Consider adding a bus/tram stop or metro/monorail station just a short walk away.

But don’t forget that apart from tourists, your local residents also go to matches too!

Set up your public transport so that they can go from your residential areas to the stadium without having to drive.

A large crowd of people walking from the stadium to the nearby subway station after a match.

Tip #3: Place the Stadium Close To Intercity Transport

It’s usually a good idea to place your football stadium fairly close to your intercity transport hubs (e.g., intercity train station, airport, or harbor).

That will allow tourists to get to it easily and reduce the amount of people in cars.

Making it easy for tourists to go to and from the stadium also means they won’t be causing traffic congestion elsewhere in your city.

This football stadium is built near a train station with an intercity connection, making it easy for tourists to come in large numbers.

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Liz Villegas

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Liz is a writer and photographer with a love for building and strategy games. Her spare time is often split between lifting, reading, drawing, annoying her dog Mr. Porky Butt, and squinting at stat tables on the wiki pages of whatever game she's currently playing.

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