KSHB 41 reporter Tod Palmer covers sports business and eastern Jackson County, including Independence. Share your story idea with Tod.
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FIFA World Cup 26 coming to Kansas City isn’t just a business opportunity for Chiefs Chairman and CEO Clark Hunt — it’s the fulfillment of a family legacy passed down from his dad, the late Lamar Hunt, as I learned last Friday during an exclusive one-on-one interview.
“My dad and my mom, they were fans of all sports, and they loved big sporting events,” Clark said. “There's nothing bigger than the World Cup. The passion that you get from the fan bases from around the world and the diversity of the fans in terms of how they cheer on their team, there's nothing like the World Cup. I think that really captured his fancy and was fun for us as a family.”
A 9-year-old Clark attended his first World Cup with his dad in 1974, which is where his love for soccer crystallized.
“We were in Düsseldorf, Germany, for a game, and we went into one of the town plazas where they had games set up for kids and teenagers,” Clark recalled. “... This was very organic. This was nothing that was very much pre-planned. And my dad, whose nickname was ‘Games,’ he went over and said, ‘Hey, let's do this.’ It had a ball, and I was able to kick it through the hole in the wall. I have these fun photos of him doing the same thing, which are just amazing because he didn't play soccer growing up. But I have to say his form was actually pretty good.”
That moment became a core childhood memory for Clark, who went on to play soccer at SMU in college.
The Hunts skipped the 1978 World Cup because of unrest in Argentina, but Clark has been to every other World Cup tournament in the last 52 years.
The youngest Hunt brother — Dan, who serves as president of FC Dallas and co-owns the Chiefs with his siblings — began attending World Cups with Lamar and Clark in 1986.
When France won the 1998 World Cup as hosts, the Hunts got caught up in the pandemonium in Paris after the final.
“The entire city was in a celebration to the point where they had to stop the subways, so we ended up getting stopped,” Clark said. “We were on the Champs Élysées about two miles from our hotel and had to walk through this celebration that was borderline chaotic going on. That's just one of those memories that I'll never forget.”
That was Lamar’s penultimate World Cup, but Clark and Dan have carried on the family tradition.
Lamar helped found the United Soccer Association in 1967 and later co-founded Major League Soccer, fulfilling a requirement from FIFA to restart a top-tier professional soccer league as part of the 1994 World Cup hosting agreement.
“I think you can easily say there was no person who was more important to the development of soccer in this country, and he's been recognized by the National Soccer Hall of Fame for those contributions,” Clark said.
Lamar was inducted into the National Soccer Hall of Fame in 1982 and received the organization’s Medal of Honor in 1999, the same year U.S. Soccer named its annual championship — the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup — in his honor.
To Lamar's disappointment, Kansas City didn’t host any games during the 1994 World Cup, but he served as co-chair of the Dallas Host City Committee — a role Dan is filling ahead of the 2026 tourney, while Clark serves as co-chair of the KC2026 Host City Committee.
“I remember being with him down on the field, pitching FIFA and explaining how we would get the width that international soccer requires in the stadium [in 1994],” Clark said. “Apparently, they didn't buy our plan or found another reason not to bring the games in Kansas City, but I think he would be absolutely thrilled [about hosting games in World Cup 26]. This would be so special for him, because he loves Kansas City, he loves Arrowhead Stadium, he loves the sport of soccer, and to have the World Cup coming to KC, where all those things come together, would be really meaningful for him.”
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