KANSAS CITY, Missouri — Only 11,500 people could fit into CPKC Stadium for its grand opening Saturday, where the Kansas City Current defeated the Portland Thorns 5-4, but it felt like the entire city knew the history that was happening.
CPKC Stadium is the first stadium built specifically for a National Women's Soccer League team, setting a new standard that serves as a tangible turning point for the 11-year-old league.
Passengers arriving at Kansas City International Airport had to walk over the Current crest and between two walls emblazoned with Current branding and stadium messaging to reach the baggage claim area. Teal billboards towered over the highways leading into and through the city, their messages alternating between game information and simple lines like “2.5 miles of history…Experience CPKC Stadium.” The message was omnipresent.
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“There are teals everywhere now,” current captain and midfielder Lo'eau LaBonta said before Saturday's game. “I've only heard people talk about our game [Saturday] and not about sport [Kansas City, playing a MLS home game later that night]. Don't get me wrong, I love sports too and have been involved with them. [through marriage] for a while, but that's what I'm hearing, and that's already different. Our faces are at the airport, on the trams. that would never have happened [before]. “I bet you in the past, no one person could name the team or when our game would be on the weekend.”
This is the new normal: women's football as a water cooler event, the ticket everyone wants. For at least a few days, the city that just celebrated another Chiefs Super Bowl victory was not decked out in red and yellow. Instead, downtown buildings and bridges glowed teal and fans flooded the streets with current kits.
The grand opening of CPKC Stadium aims to reset the narrative, not only in Kansas City, where the previous team LaBonta alluded to (and once played for) folded in 2017, but also about the investment and standards of the women's soccer worldwide. The NWSL remains a leader in raising the level of the sport, and an ambitious Kansas City ownership group tops that list. A stadium dedicated to an NWSL team is the new standard.
“Honestly, when we were kids, that's what we thought the expectation was,” current goalkeeper and Kansas native Adrianna Franch said. “When I [was] About 5 to 8 years old, I thought, 'I want to be a professional soccer player.' This is the standard you expect it to be. “I think what that represents and means is that everyone who wants to be a professional will know what this standard is.”
Facilities are among the NWSL's biggest challenges, even for the most successful teams. Most NWSL teams are second or third priority tenants in stadiums built for men's teams. NWSL teams that don't have their own venues miss out on business opportunities, from the inability to choose prime dates and times for home games to restrictions on sponsorships, not to mention paying rent.
Current co-majority owners Angie and Chris Long rushed the team's launch in late 2020 out of necessity. They had been considering joining the NWSL and the process was accelerated when the league needed to add a team to replace the original Utah Royals. The Longs had a team (but not even an official name or brand) ready within a few months. Just over three years later, CPKC Stadium hosted its first game and the Current brand resonates throughout the community.
The Longs planned to build the team its own stadium from the beginning as part of their pitch to the league, originally exploring a site further outside of the city center.
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Angie Long remembers the first questions she was asked about the idea: “'Why do they need their own stadium? Can't they just go play in someone else's stadium?'
“I'd like to know which most successful sports franchise in the world is happy to sit back and be a tenant in someone else's stadium. And the fact that everyone is asking this question is a little ironic, I think, but Talk About the incredible opportunity and one of the reasons why the growth potential is there.
The Longs don't invest in things lightly. They founded Palmer Square Capital Management, which claims to manage $29 billion in assets for investors. These are highly successful entrepreneurs who see a return on investment opportunity, as does Sixth Street Partners, the majority owner of expansion team Bay FC. They see women's football as an undervalued asset.
Angie Long said if they waited for public funding to build their own stadium, they would still be waiting today. Instead, they spent $18 million of their own money on a training camp for the team that opens in 2022. It is one of the best training centers in the NWSL and plans are already underway to expand it and develop the area. They financed most of the more than $120 million bill to finish CPKC Stadium.
CPKC Stadium is a mid-sized gem designed with attention to detail to make it a first-class experience for players and fans alike. The Longs toured more than a dozen different stadiums and sports fields looking for inspiration and best practices for CPKC Stadium. They borrowed subtle touches like mesh seating (instead of the usual plastic seats) from Austin FC's Q2 Stadium and a curated local dining experience from the Golden State Warriors' Chase Center. Like the signage around town, everything is teal, from the seating and under-ceiling lighting to the hand soap and countertops in some of the bathrooms.
The stadium is located on the south bank of the Missouri River. It's unmissable from the adjacent Bond Bridge, a major Interstate 29 interchange that had also been illuminated teal for the past few nights. It's part of a larger development project aimed at revitalizing Kansas City's waterfront, the Longs hope.
NWSL Commissioner Jessica Berman said the Longs' legacy will be that they will not be the last to build their own stadium and that they shared their successes with other NWSL owners.
“For decades, it's true that no question has been raised about the use of not only public funds but also public influence to be able to build a stadium,” Berman said at halftime on Saturday. “Although this stadium was privately financed, they needed a lot of support and trust from the city, and that has happened with men's stadiums and arenas for decades without a doubt.
“That's what I describe as seed funding. It's allowed those companies to not only survive but thrive in the long run, and none of that has ever been available to women's teams. I think that's the total shift we're going to make.” .that we see in the future, because we're getting calls not only from owners in our league but also from city officials to say, “How can we think about this differently for our community? Because now we recognize that this is a community asset and we want this to be a thriving business like the men's teams.'”
This weekend in Kansas City was a party, from Friday night's VIP kickoff event with drones that lit up the Kansas City skies, to Saturday's pregame musical festivities and an entertaining game that brought nine goals, tying a NWSL record. It was a party celebrating how far the league had come, but it was also an inauguration.
Thirteen years ago, the former Kansas City NWSL team debuted in a high school football stadium. Today, the NWSL is a major league with teams worthy of their own stadiums. As current coach Vlatko Andonovski, who coached that inaugural NWSL match in 2013, put it: “Completely different worlds. Nothing happened that day.” [in 2013] that can be compared to what happened today.
