Inter&Co Stadium

About Inter&Co Stadium

Drop into the Parramore blocks just west of downtown Orlando on a match night and you hear Inter&Co Stadium before you see it. The purple smoke and the drums give it away. This is a 25,500-seat, soccer-specific bowl where Orlando City SC and the Orlando Pride play, and where The Wall, a 3,811-capacity safe-standing supporters’ section behind the north goal, turns a mid-size venue into one of the loudest rooms in American soccer.

Orlando City moved in for the 2017 season after two years at the old Citrus Bowl, now Camping World Stadium. The club built here for $155 million, hired Populous to design it, and paid for the whole thing privately. That last part matters. While most of the MLS stadium wave of the 2010s leaned on public money and suburban land, Orlando bought a downtown-adjacent site and dropped the field 8 feet (2.4 m) below street level, so the walk up to the plaza opens onto a bowl already in full voice. A four-sided canopy caps the stands and traps the sound.

The stadium carries a solemn distinction. Forty-nine rainbow-colored seats sit together in Section 12, one for each victim of the June 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando. The seats are a permanent memorial, in place from the first season, and the club’s response to Pulse, from the early tributes to the installation itself, bound Orlando City to the wider city in a way few expansion clubs ever manage.

The Orlando Pride share the building. They joined the NWSL as an expansion club in 2016 and moved into the new stadium in 2017, and they have built a loyal following of their own. The dual tenancy gives the venue year-round soccer in a city where the Magic, the theme parks, and a permanent tourist economy are all competing for the same attention. Not every stadium earns its atmosphere. This one did it fast.

Getting to Inter&Co Stadium

Public Transit

The downtown-adjacent location makes transit a real option, which is not something you can say about most MLS stadiums.

For a lot of fans, the easiest approach is simply to walk over from the bars and restaurants around Church Street. If you are staying out by the theme parks, budget 20 to 30 minutes for the drive or rideshare.

Driving + Parking

The address is 655 W. Church Street, Orlando, FL 32805. I-4 is the primary approach.

On-site parking is limited. Downtown garages run $10 to $25 on match days, with the Geico Garage on Church Street and the SunTrust Center Garage on Pine Street among the closest. Metered street parking fills early. This is urban parking, so expect to walk a few blocks and factor that into your timing.

Rideshare

Uber and Lyft use designated zones on W. Church Street near the main entrance. From International Drive, expect $12 to $18. From downtown hotels, more like $5 to $8. Post-match surge is moderate, and the smartest move is to walk to Church Street for a drink and let the first wave clear before you request a car.

From the Airport

Construction & Design

The stadium almost landed a block away. Orlando City broke ground in October 2014, then paused and shifted the footprint one block west that same year to sidestep a legal challenge over the original parcel. When the club unveiled a revised plan the following summer, it added seats at the south end to push capacity to 25,500 without the redesign that would have cost another year. The team also decided, in May 2015, to fund the whole project privately rather than chase public dollars, a rare call for a stadium of this era.

Populous drew it up. The firm known for NFL and MLS venues gave Orlando a compact, single-tier lower bowl wrapped 360 degrees around the pitch, then topped the stands with a sweeping metal-deck canopy carried on structural masts and cables. The canopy does two jobs at once: it keeps rain off spectators and, by capping the bowl, it holds the crowd noise in. Walter P Moore engineered the structure and Barton Malow served as general contractor, with ICON Venue Group managing the project. The final bill came to roughly $155 million, up from an early estimate near $110 million.

The signature design move is underground. The field sits about 8 feet (2.4 m) below street level, so fans arrive at plaza height and look down into the action, and the seating tiers pull in tight to the touchlines. Behind the north goal, the club built The Wall, a single-deck safe-standing section for 3,811 supporters that Orlando City bills as North America’s first safe-standing section in a soccer stadium. Rail seating, steep rake, one continuous block of supporters. It is the loudest corner of the building and the one that shows up in every highlight package.

Ownership has changed hands, but the stadium has not. Orlando City and the Pride were bought by Zygi and Mark Wilf, who also own the Minnesota Vikings, in a sale completed in July 2021 valued at a reported $400 to $450 million. The club owns and operates the stadium and the land under it, having purchased the downtown site outright. Naming rights, though, have turned over three times, which is the one thing about this building that refuses to sit still.

History of Inter&Co Stadium

Orlando City needed a home of its own. The club spent its first two MLS seasons, 2015 and 2016, renting the aging Citrus Bowl, and the new downtown ground was the whole point of the expansion pitch. It delivered in 2017, and it delivered loud.

First match (March 5, 2017): Orlando City beat New York City FC 1–0 in front of a sellout crowd of 25,550. Cyle Larin scored the stadium’s first goal. The March in from Church Street, the purple smoke, The Wall at full cry, it all arrived fully formed on day one.

Pulse memorial (2017): The 49 rainbow seats went into Section 12 before the first season, a permanent tribute to the victims of the June 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting. It remains the club’s most meaningful gesture to the city and the reason the stadium reads as more than a sports venue.

Women’s soccer takes root (2017 onward): The Orlando Pride, an NWSL expansion side from 2016, moved in for 2017 and made the ground one of the few in the country hosting top-flight men’s and women’s professional soccer under one roof. The stadium also staged the 2017 NWSL Championship, won 1–0 by the Portland Thorns over the North Carolina Courage.

Silverware and big nights (2019–2022): The venue hosted the 2019 MLS All-Star Game before 25,527 fans, then handed Orlando City its first major trophy in 2022, a 3–0 win over Sacramento Republic in the U.S. Open Cup Final in front of another packed house. During the pandemic it staged CONCACAF Champions League knockout matches behind closed doors in 2020.

Onto the global stage (2025): The stadium was one of the host venues for the expanded 2025 FIFA Club World Cup, putting international sides on its pitch and giving downtown Orlando a taste of tournament soccer.

Naming history: It opened as Orlando City Stadium, became Exploria Stadium in June 2019 under a deal with Exploria Resorts, and was renamed Inter&Co Stadium on January 18, 2024, when the Brazilian digital bank Inter&Co took the naming rights in a reported 10-year agreement. Three names in seven years, and through every one of them The Wall never once quieted down.

From the smoke behind the north goal to the 49 seats in Section 12 to a pitch sunk below the streets of Parramore, Inter&Co Stadium is where Orlando’s soccer culture actually lives. It is proof that you do not need 40,000 seats to build one of the best atmospheres in American sports.

Sources & Further Reading

• Inter&Co Stadium official site: interco-stadium.com. Capacity, private-funding figure, The Wall, the sunken field, and the Section 12 Pulse memorial.
• Populous project page: populous.com. Confirms Populous as architect and describes the canopy and downtown Sports Corridor siting.
• MLSSoccer.com on the Inter&Co renaming: mlssoccer.com. Date and terms of the January 2024 naming-rights deal.
• Wikipedia entry on Inter&Co Stadium: en.wikipedia.org. Groundbreaking date, cost, design team, tenants, and attendance records.