How Kansas City became the 2026 World Cup’s most unlikely host city

Okayansas Metropolis was hardly a certain guess to be named that day as one of many host cities for the 2026 World Cup, however Kathy Nelson was assured sufficient to rearrange for a kind of big-screen watch events within the stylish Energy & Mild District downtown when Fifa confirmed the alternatives on 16 June.

Nelson, the president of the Kansas Metropolis Sports activities Fee, felt that the town, regardless that it’s the Thirty first-largest metropolitan space within the US, had made a robust bid. However Fifa had leaked nothing. When Kansas Metropolis was picked, the group roared. She cried, a bit of.

“Seven years of labor went into 10 seconds of elation,” Nelson informed the Guardian just lately at her workplace.

Though Nelson says this was extra of a bid from the Midwest US, Kansas Metropolis would be the smallest of 11 American metro areas to host the World Cup. Kansas Metropolis beat out Phoenix, Denver, Orlando, Cincinnati and Nashville amongst others – making this a sports activities upset, of kinds.

“There’s a pure chip on our shoulders for the followers and sports activities groups typically,” Jake Reid, the president of Sporting Kansas Metropolis, the town’s Main League Soccer franchise, informed the Guardian. “They’re passionate, however there’s a little bit of a David v Goliath feeling right here.”

Despite the fact that, because the story goes, the late Kansas Metropolis Chiefs proprietor Lamar Hunt was chargeable for renaming the NFL’s championship the Tremendous Bowl after seeing his children play with a bouncy toy known as a Tremendous Ball, Kansas Metropolis has by no means performed host to the large recreation itself.

The Chiefs gained the Tremendous Bowl two years in the past, nevertheless it was their first NFL title in 50 years. Kansas Metropolis has had an NBA workforce, the Kings, and an NHL workforce, the Scouts, however neither was adequate to play for a championship earlier than transferring elsewhere within the Seventies.

Town’s big-league baseball workforce, the Royals, gained the World Collection in 1985 and 2015, however the membership, which has gained just one division title within the final 36 years, seems destined for its seventh straight dropping season and one more August hearth sale of its greatest gamers.

What Kansas Metropolis did have, although, was location, smack-dab in the midst of the continental US, the so-called Heartland, not more than a four-hour flight to another 2026 World Cup web site. As Nelson mentioned with a smile, “Once you have a look at the map, oh, we stand out.”

However there was apparently far more. Kansas Metropolis actually does love each sorts of soccer, American and affiliation.

The bid was a giant deal right here, joined by a whole bunch and co-chaired by Sporting Kansas Metropolis proprietor Cliff Illig and Clark Hunt, Lamar’s son and the present Chiefs proprietor. Lamar Hunt, the soft-spoken Texas oilman who died in 2006, was enthusiastic about soccer.

When Main League Soccer was fashioned in 1996, Hunt introduced a workforce to Kansas Metropolis known as the Wizards. The membership was renamed Sporting Kansas Metropolis in 2011 and performs its house video games earlier than giant crowds at a state-of-the-art 18,000-seat stadium.

When Hunt died, he owned MLS groups in Columbus and Dallas. The US Open Cup, the nation’s largest home event, was named after Hunt in 1999.

When Hunt introduced the Dallas Texans to Kansas Metropolis in 1963 and renamed them the Chiefs, he was influential in establishing the Kansas Metropolis space as a youth soccer hotbed. The Heartland Soccer Affiliation, with 30,000 gamers, is the biggest such affiliation within the US.

FC Kansas Metropolis had been amongst eight unique members of the Nationwide Girls’s Soccer League, profitable two championships earlier than folding in 2017. However the NWSL added an growth workforce in 2021, now known as the Present, who opened their very own observe facility final yr and could have the league’s first ladies’s soccer particular stadium, an 11,500-seat venue alongside the Missouri River.

“The fantastic thing about soccer is that it’s not about your measurement, it’s concerning the measurement of your coronary heart,” Victor Montagliani, a member of the Fifa council, mentioned at a information convention after a tour of Kansas Metropolis final yr. “The fact is, Kansas Metropolis clearly has a stadium and is in a metropolis that’s loopy concerning the recreation.”

The precise infrastructure itself is being shored up. A brand new terminal at Kansas Metropolis Worldwide Airport is to open subsequent yr, and freeway and public-transportation tasks underway within the metropolis ought to make it simpler for 1000’s of worldwide company to get round.

Within the meantime, Kansas Metropolis and the Chiefs are to play host to the 2023 NFL draft. Kansas Metropolis has lengthy been a school basketball capital: The Jayhawks, the NCAA champion, play in Lawrence, Kansas, 45 miles west of Kansas Metropolis, and the Large 12 Event is performed on the 15-year-old T-Cellular Heart in downtown Kansas Metropolis.

The announcement was not a lot of a end result because it was a inexperienced gentle to maintain getting ready. At the very least 4 World Cup matches – and maybe 5 to seven – are to be performed at Arrowhead Stadium, the town’s 76,000-seat NFL facility.

However many different particulars stay. A schedule, to not point out the total subject and group pairings of the 48 taking part nations, gained’t be launched till nearer to 2026. So Nelson and Katherine Holland, who led the workforce that put collectively Kansas Metropolis’s bid, will not be completed.

Virtually instantly after the host cities had been introduced, consideration swung, naturally, towards the financial profit for every metropolitan area. Such a boon is troublesome to measure, however it’s secure to say that the World Cup will herald tens of millions of {dollars} to every host metropolis.

“It can change Kansas Metropolis for the following 4 years, and past,” Holland informed the Guardian. “You’ll be able to by no means pay for that kind of selling publicity.”

Fifa will name a lot of the pictures from right here – establishing ticket costs and availability, for instance. Many logistics of essentially the most sophisticated event in sports activities, “the nuts and bolts,” as Holland known as them, will should be labored out after the 2022 World Cup is held in Qatar.

Seven of the highest 10 metro areas within the US will likely be World Cup hosts – New York, Los Angeles, Dallas, Houston, Philadelphia, Atlanta and Miami – however Kansas Metropolis belongs, too. As Reid mentioned, “We knew we needed to differentiate ourselves.” And Kansas Metropolis did.

“I don’t worry about filling Arrowhead,” Holland mentioned.

When the bid committee needed to discover two native celebrities to supply a video message of congratulations for the choice present, Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes and Trendy Household star Eric Stonestreet stepped up. (Jason Sudeikis, the Ted Lasso star, was tied up.)

“Kansas Metropolis, we acquired the World Cup!” Mahomes mentioned in his message. “Town is gonna present out in 2026. We will’t wait to welcome followers from throughout the globe to the center of America and to the world’s loudest stadium. Let’s go!”

Nelson and Holland laughed after they informed the story of internet hosting Fifa officers for a tour of the town and a few of its services final October. The tour, after all, included lunch – and lunch, because it typically does in Kansas Metropolis, included its world-famous barbecue, this time from Joe’s.

Barbecued meat is greatest loved exterior on a paper plate with beans, coleslaw and chilly beer, however at this luncheon, the barbecue was served to the worldwide guests on china, with wine. Mirrored was Kansas Metropolis’s previous, and its close to future. “It was lovely,” Nelson mentioned.