KSHB 41 reporter Tod Palmer covers sports business and eastern Jackson County. Share your story idea with Tod.
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During the last 30 years, Kansas City has evolved into one of the great soccer cities in the U.S., but there was a time in the early 2000s when we almost weren’t a soccer city anymore at all.
“We had a coaching change during the ’99 season, so a lot of different stuff happened,” Sporting Kansas City Chief Communications Officer Rob Thomson, who the club initially hired in 1997, said. “Then, 2000 came and we won the (MLS) Supporter’s Shield and MLS Cup. You're on a high, right? That's the pinnacle of what you can do. It was a great year — new players, new energy.”
Those vibes didn’t last long after a message from Major League Soccer’s relatively new commissioner.
“Don Garber started that next year, came to Kansas City for the first time and told us we were likely going to be contracted,” Thomson said. “You're coming from this wave of emotions, from finishing near the bottle table in 1999 to winning everything in 2000 to then the commissioner coming and saying, ‘Hey, this is not a viable market.’”
As part of the agreement to stage the 1994 World Cup in the United States, FIFA mandated that US Soccer launch a top-flight professional league, which led to the founding of MLS in 1996.
But the league faced significant financial headwinds in those early years with billionaires Phil Anschutz and Lamar Hunt, who owned the then-Wiz/Wizards and Chiefs, absorbing huge losses to keep the league afloat.
“We had very limited resources, zero budgets and a very, very, very small staff,” Thomson recalled.
Things weren’t much better on the field than in the boardroom.
In fact, “there were times we just didn't have fields at all,” Chet North, the director of Sporting KC’s Sports Performance Lab, said.
North was hired in 1996 as the team’s head athletic trainer for its inaugural season, but he really was essentially its entire training staff — and travel coordinator and road equipment manager in addition to scouring the city for practice fields.
“You were basically the trainer, the therapist, the massage therapist, the psychologist,” he said. “I also did all the hotel and ticketing, stuff like that when we get to the airport, so you wore many, many hats. ... You just did what you had to do back then; most of the clubs were like that.”
During the club’s first three seasons, it wasn’t unusual for manager Ron Newman, his won and assistant coach Guy Newman and North to scatter across the Kansas City region in search of a field where the team could practice.
“I'd go out to Olathe, Ron would go to Raytown or something, and Guy would go somewhere else,” North said. “We'd finally say, ‘Hey, we got a school here in Olathe’ and then we’d page all the players to show up here at the facility, at the field. The wood-paneled van would park and throw these bags of clothes out.”
Midfielder Matt McKeon would back his white Dodge Ram truck up to the field, so North could use the bed of it to tape players’ ankles for training. Those were the lean years.
“In 1997 or (1998), a player gave his jersey away at a game,” Thomson said. “I had to go from the locker room, run out and find the fan to get the jersey back. We made so few jerseys that year — for our players and to sell — that you just couldn't give one away.”
Things have changed dramatically. These days, Sporting KC might sell as many jerseys in a single game as they used to print for an entire season.
“It was a labor of love for everyone — working hard, just trying to stay afloat,” Thomson said. “We were a small-market team. Being a founding team in this league was crazy — a small market that hadn't had much soccer history to that point. Just one owner at that time who was very passionate about the sport, but we were always fighting uphill. ... It wasn't a soccer business at that time. It was more of, again, a labor of love.”
The Hunt family, which also owned the Columbus Crew at one time and still owns FC Dallas, sold the team to a new ownership group headed up by the Illig and Patterson families shortly before his death.
A rebrand followed along with construction of Children’s Mercy Park and the Compass Minerals National Performance Center, which spurred Kansas City soccer culture into a new stratosphere.
“If it wasn't for Lamar, this new ownership group wouldn't have come on board and, if the new ownership group didn't come on board, the World Cup would not be in Kansas City (next summer),” Thomson said.
Kansas City will host six games in FIFA World Cup, including a quarterfinal match.
The first match at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium in the World Cup will kick off June 16.
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