KSHB 41 reporter Tod Palmer covers sports business and eastern Jackson County. Share your story idea with Tod.
FIFA World Cup 26 arrives in Kansas City in less than 13 months, but KC2026's push to get businesses in the region ready is well underway.
“With this big event coming to the city, it has a chance to put Kansas City on a map worldwide — not only for all sports, but also for our business community,” Joe Burger, the executive director of the Kansas State Youth Soccer Association, said.
Burger served as the emcee for an Olathe Chamber of Commerce Business Luncheon focused on World Cup readiness Wednesday at the Ball Events Center in south Olathe.
Dozens of Olathe business owners heard a panel discussion with two KC2026 representatives, Director of Regional Impact Tracy Whelpley and Director of Volunteer Operations Lori Thomas, and Johnson County Transit Director Josh Powers about how to get ready for the region to welcome a 650,000 visitors who will spend $650 million, according to VisitKC projections.
“We're talking about 40 days from the start of the tournament to the end of the tournament,” Whelpley said. “Then, if we have base camps, we have teams and their fans and support systems that will be coming to the region potentially as early as two weeks before that. ... We're talking about six different major events that are almost on the scale of a Super Bowl.”
That’s why Whelpley is touring the region, meeting with business groups to ensure Kansas City’s entrepreneurs are ready to meet the moment.
More than 1,400 regional businesses already have filled out the KC2026 Business Interest form, an online tool that will help keep businesses in the loop about World Cup-connected business opportunities.
“We’ve talked to a lot of organizations — ESOs (entrepreneur-support organizations), chambers — that regularly work with small businesses to advise us on how we should be counseling them,” Whelpley said. “What they told us was, ‘This is an unprecedented event of a scale of magnitude that we haven't seen. ... We have these relationships already. We know how to work with small businesses and how to advise them. We have great tools. What we need are those World Cup-specific information and trainings that help them contextualize this opportunity, that help them understand more about the people that will be coming to visit here, and how to best serve and welcome them.’”
Part of KC2026’s mission is to make sure the entire region — especially restaurants, hotels, attractions and retail shops — benefits from the World Cup.
“It took a regional effort to attract the World Cup to Kansas City — a bi-state effort,” Whelpley said. “Kansas, Missouri, and all of the counties and municipalities that make up the region had to pull together to attract it, so we want to make sure that the benefits go across the region as well.”
That didn’t happen with the 2023 NFL Draft, which proved to be a fairly insular event. People who came to Kansas City tended to stay within the footprint setup by the league, but the World Cup promises to be different.
“I think what's coming is on a world scale we haven't seen yet,” Burger said. “But I think once we understand what's actually coming and we prepare the business, it'll help them flourish.”
Visitors will arrive earlier, stay longer and spend more time in the local communities.
“You mentioned the NFL Draft, and it's something that we're very aware of — that there was a level of disappointment amongst some business owners,” Whelpley said. “We want to make sure that we're communicating and helping to build expectations appropriately. ... We had to show that we have 55,000 hotel rooms within a two-and-a-half hour radius of Kansas City, so that should give you an idea of the kind of distribution of visitors and how they'll be out and about — not just sequestered to one small, two-block footprint.”
—
