KC’s Sea Life animals predict World Cup match winners. See who they picked
The animals at Sea Life Kansas City are just as excited about the World Cup coming to the city as the people flooding the street with team jerseys in all different colors.
Now that this international sports event has taken over the city, the aquarium wanted to get involved.
“We absolutely love the involvement, especially downtown, bringing stuff to Crown Center,” said general manager Brittany Sirridge. “We love being a part of it.”
The animals are using their stomachs to predict which teams will win World Cup matches. A keeper holds a yummy, fishy treat in front of two flags for the animals to make their choices.
“Having the animal picks is kind of like our way of having a fun involvement with World Cup. So we’re super happy to do it,” said Sirridge.
It’s been a long tradition for the animals to do predictions during football season for the Chiefs, said Sirridge.
“I will say, our animals are pretty spot on most of the time,” said Sirridge.
But when it comes to the Chiefs, they’re a little biased toward their home team.
For Thursday’s match, Stubbs the stingray predicted that the Netherlands would be taking home the win over Tunisia.
So far, the sea animals haven’t been wrong. For the last game, Ecuador versus Curaçao, Frankie, a southern stingray like Stubbs, predicted Curaçao. Although the game ended in a tie, it was still a big moment for Curaçao, as they scored their first ever point in the World Cup as a team.
The Blue Wave success wasn’t the only one predicted. The animals predicted Argentina to win against Algeria.
The animals are only making predictions for the KC matches.
“Otherwise there’d be a little bit too much going on,” said Sirridge.
Doing this also connects the aquarium with the Kansas City community. It’s a way to share about their business in a creative way.
“It’s one thing to be a business and just be doing our normal day-to-day, but to actually get to relate to things in our community instead of just doing the normal day-to-day, it’s always fun having that fun little change of pace,” said Sirridge.