If you were sharpening your skills in ladder golf, or practicing Jenga on your kitchen table or have spent countless hours in your driveway perfecting your cornhole or washers tossing in preparation for the Philly Tailgate Games, you’re going to have wait for your one shining moment. For your chance at glory.

How long? A year, at least. If not forever.

That’s because the Wells Fargo Center cut the cord on the Philly Tailgate Games just six weeks after they were announced, and did so relatively quietly – although the inaugural games could still take place next summer. The odds on that are off the board at the moment.

So, all you parking lot athletes, all you weekend warriors, not only do you now know how the summer Olympians felt in 2020 when the Olympic Games were postponed, but you also can spend the next 12 months training to be the best in Philly at these parking lot staples to win cool prizes.

Maybe.


The Wells Fargo Center announced the games, which were scheduled for September 25, back on July 20. It was sponsored by Yuengling, and according to the press release was going to feature “beer, music, food and tailgate-game competition.”

Some of the prizes were great too, the cornhole winner got a year’s supply of free beer.

 

The Jenga winner got a suite to any concert (with 12 tickets) at Wells Fargo Center.

 

The washers winner got a free night’s stay at Live! Casino, and a $200 dinner voucher…

 

… while the Ladder Golf winner won a set of Flyers season tickets.

Oh, and everyone who attended would be entered into a drawing to win a pair of tickets to every concert at Wells Fargo Center for a year.

However, after a quick marketing push for the event, we stopped hearing about it. And after just six weeks, the event was cancelled.

There was no official word why. An email went out to anyone who purchased a ticket (which was either $40 if you were participating or $10 for general admission) telling them about the cancellation and the Center stopped promoting it, but there was no public announcement as to why it suddenly wasn’t happening anymore.

I was told that the powers that be still like the idea of this event and are considering bringing it back in the summer of 2022, but that with the increase of infections from the Delta variant of COVID-19 that having this event at this time “didn’t seem like the right thing to do.”

However, having 70,000 people tailgating for the Eagles game in the same parking lots six days earlier is totally fine.

I was also told that events like this have a “super late-buying crowd,” which also went into the decision to cancel.

In other words, it wasn’t selling well and generating much buzz.

Methinks that might have had a bigger impact on this event than Delta, but what do I know?

Instead, the Wells Fargo Center is moving forward with two other plans for the parking lots.

First, they are going to try and trot out smaller versions of the Philly Tailgate Games prior to select Flyers home games, however that is still in its conceptual stage and no dates have been announced.

Secondly, they are bringing back the Winter on Broad Street festival that they debuted last year, but want to channel all their energy into making it bigger and better this time around.

Great. More Gritty in a Santa suit. Just what we have all been pining for.

That’s all. Nothing else to see here. Plus, I gotta run. Only 365ish more days for me to perfect my cornholing…. or something.