🍫 Hershey, a World Cup team, and a TV crew walk into Frisco...

It's official: Toyota Stadium will serve as a FIFA World Cup 2026 Team Base Camp for whichever team advances out of UEFA Playoff Path B: Poland, Sweden, Ukraine, or Albania.

Playoff matches are March 26 and 31. We'll know who's coming by early April.

What's a base camp? Way more than a practice field. Teams live, train, recover, and prep between matches here for the entire tournament. Frisco will be their home base all summer.

This is all happening alongside Toyota Stadium's $182M renovation, adding 3,400 seats and major concessions and restroom upgrades. The east side reopens by summer 2026, right on time.

North Texas is expecting 3.8 million visitors and up to $2.1B in regional economic impact. Nine matches are being played at AT&T Stadium in Arlington (temporarily renamed Dallas Stadium), including two Group F games featuring the Netherlands, Japan, and whoever comes out of Frisco's playoff path.

FC Dallas is also planning a 39-day watch party in Simpson Plaza covering 97 of the 104 matches, with Frisco residents getting priority. My girls won't understand what they're watching. We're going anyway.

Tickets: Last-Minute Sales Phase opens April 2 at 9 a.m.

Frisco King, a new Paramount+ series written entirely by Taylor Sheridan (the Yellowstone guy), stars Samuel L. Jackson as a man who trades his New Orleans roots for a fresh start in what Sheridan is calling a "modern-day Mayberry." That Mayberry is us.

Filming starts late March. Most production is in Fort Worth, but Frisco gets one to two filming days per episode, plus B-roll around the city. Eight episodes. Expect camera crews around fairly regularly this spring and summer.

Want to be in it? About 70% of the cast will be locals. Producers are setting up a dedicated talent page for Frisco residents and have expressed a preference for hiring veterans. The city will share casting details as they open up.

Mayor Jeff Cheney confirmed producers plan to portray Frisco positively and that the city itself is one of the "characters." I have no notes.

Hershey is setting up shop on the 12th floor of The Tower at HALL Park, a 16,000 sq ft, $2.85 million build-out with construction starting in April and a late summer completion target.

They join Chobani and a growing list of food-and-beverage giants choosing the $7 billion HALL Park campus over a downtown high-rise.

The tower itself is less "cubicle farm" and more "place you'd actually want to go to work": private terraces on every floor, a fitness center, Kaleidoscope Park right outside, and a chef-driven Italian restaurant next door. Not a bad place to spend your days when your company literally makes candy for a living.

I commute through Legacy West and watch this corporate corridor build in real time. As a newer Frisco resident, it never stops being a little surreal.

The Frisco market is normalizing with the average home value at $648,589 and down 4.9% year-over-year, plus homes taking about 74 days to go pending, buyers have more leverage and time than they did during the frenzy years. That said, with luxury neighborhoods like Newman Village and Chapel Creek still commanding well over $1M while entry points like Old Donation sit near $400K, Frisco remains a highly desirable, tiered market where pricing strategy matters more than ever.

PSA: My wife Emily helps people find the right real estate agent before they start the search, not after a bad experience with the wrong one. She'll talk through what you need and make a match. Free for you. Schedule a call.