A celebration meant to send Angel City FC fans home happy turned into a genuine scare on Friday night, July 3, when a post-match fireworks display went badly wrong at BMO Stadium in Los Angeles.
The show was meant to cap off Angel City’s 2-0 win over the Orlando Pride and double as an early Fourth of July celebration under the club’s “LA Sports Night” promotion, complete with mascots from other Los Angeles sports teams.
Instead, multiple fireworks that were supposed to launch straight into the sky veered sideways and skipped across the field before ricocheting directly into the stands, sending fans scrambling out of their seats in a matter of seconds.
Videos shared widely on social media captured just how chaotic those moments became. Footage posted by X user @ThisIsJadeRyan shows fireballs bouncing across the pitch and into occupied sections of the stadium while people can be heard yelling and gasping in disbelief as they rush for the exits.
Another angle circulating online shows the field completely blanketed in smoke as the rogue fireworks continued firing in different directions, with the chaos unfolding near the end of what was reportedly the team’s first-ever fireworks show at BMO Stadium.
One woman’s voice rings out clearly in one of the clips, simply crying out in shock as the mortars kept coming.
What Angel City FC and Officials Are Saying
Despite how frightening the footage looks, both the club and city officials have been consistent in saying no injuries have been confirmed.
A spokesperson for the Los Angeles Fire Department told PEOPLE that the department did not respond to any injuries connected to the incident, which offers at least some reassurance given how close the fireworks came to the crowd.
Angel City FC echoed that in its own statement, confirming that the situation is being described internally as a fireworks malfunction rather than anything intentional or connected to the display’s original design.
The club’s official statement, shared with multiple outlets including PEOPLE, laid out what happened from their side in fairly measured terms.
According to the statement, medical and safety teams were on-site and ready to respond, and stadium operations confirmed the venue was secure, allowing guests, staff, players and crew to depart safely.
Angel City FC also confirmed it hired a third-party pyrotechnics vendor to run the display, a detail the club’s communications manager, Stephanie Rudnick, reportedly confirmed directly to the Los Angeles Times in the aftermath of the incident.
The club says it is now working closely with that vendor to investigate exactly what went wrong and determine which safety changes are needed before any future fireworks shows are considered.
That investigation matters because of just how close some fans and staff reportedly came to being hurt.
According to Yahoo Sports, one firework is said to have been shot toward the section where Angel City co-founder Julie Uhrman was seated alongside team staff and family guests, while another stray rocket reportedly struck a security guard who was out on the field.
Even with those close calls, early reporting continues to indicate that no serious injuries occurred, which several outlets have noted feels almost lucky given how unpredictable the footage makes the fireworks look as they bounced through the crowd.
Fans Describe Just How Shaken They Were
For the people actually sitting in the stands, the statement-driven reassurances only tell part of the story.
Fans who posted online in the hours after the show described a level of panic that went well beyond a routine fireworks mishap, with several noting that the malfunction occurred at a show already known among regulars for making people nervous.
One fan, posting about the experience afterward, explained that they specifically try to arrive late to games specifically to avoid the fireworks portion because it upsets their young child, a habit they said has now been reinforced by what happened Friday night.
Another attendee who was sitting in section 117 gave a more detailed account of the fear in the moment, saying that everyone around them seemed physically fine but was clearly rattled by how close the fireworks had come.
That fan specifically described one rocket flying toward their section and narrowly missing a security guard before striking an advertising board nearby, a detail that aligns with the video evidence showing fireworks bouncing unpredictably off the field and into fixed structures around the stadium.
Descriptions like these help explain why so many fans reached for their phones and started filming almost immediately, since the disconnect between a celebratory postgame show and an actual safety scare became obvious within seconds.
It is worth noting that as of the latest reporting, it remains unclear exactly what technical failure caused the fireworks to misfire in the first place, and neither Angel City FC nor its pyrotechnics vendor has released specific findings yet.
A club spokesperson told NBC Los Angeles over the weekend that the organization is monitoring the situation very closely, language that suggests the investigation is still active rather than concluded.
Until that review wraps up, most of the available information comes directly from the club’s public statements and fan-recorded video, which together paint a picture of a malfunction serious enough to trigger evacuations but, based on everything reported so far, not serious enough to cause confirmed injuries.
Why This Kind of Malfunction Is Genuinely Dangerous
Stories like this tend to circulate quickly precisely because the visuals are so alarming, and in this case, that alarm is fairly justified.
Professional fireworks displays are built around multiple layers of safety planning, including angle calculations, wind assessments, and barriers designed to keep spectators a safe distance from any malfunction.
When something goes wrong at that scale, whether it is a faulty mortar tube, a miscalculated trajectory, or an environmental factor no one accounted for, the margin between “scary video” and “serious injury” can shrink to almost nothing within a second or two, which is exactly what the footage from BMO Stadium appears to show.
That is also why Angel City FC’s decision to keep its own statement focused on the practical outcome- that everyone got out safely and that a review is underway- lines up with how sports organizations typically handle pyrotechnic failures.
The club has not tried to minimize what fans experienced, but it also has not gone beyond what it currently knows about the cause.
Given how many fans were recording in real time, and given that outlets from PEOPLE to KTLA to CBS Los Angeles have all independently verified the same core details, the incident is about as thoroughly documented as a stadium mishap can be within its first 24 hours.
For now, the most important confirmed facts remain fairly simple. Angel City FC beat the Orlando Pride 2-0 on July 3 in a game that will likely be remembered far more for what happened after the final whistle than for anything that occurred on the field.
A postgame fireworks display malfunctioned, sending rockets into the stands and prompting a rushed evacuation of at least some sections.
No injuries have been officially reported by the club or the Los Angeles Fire Department, and Angel City FC says it is actively reviewing the incident with its pyrotechnics vendor to determine what happened and how to prevent it from happening again.
Whether that review leads to a permanent change in how, or whether, the club runs fireworks shows in the future is something fans will likely be watching closely the next time “LA Sports Night” rolls around.
