A win for Kansas City Current, and a new chapter for the NWSL

KANSAS CITY, Missouri — Only 11,500 individuals might match into CPKC Stadium for its grand opening on Saturday, the place the Kansas City Current defeated the Portland Thorns 5-4, however it felt like the total metropolis knew about the historical past happening.

CPKC Stadium is the first stadium purpose-built for a National Women’s Soccer League staff, setting a new customary that serves as a tangible turning level for the 11-year-old league.

Arriving passengers at Kansas City International Airport needed to stroll over the Current’s crest, and between two partitions adorned with Current branding and stadium messaging, to succeed in baggage declare. Teal billboards towered over highways coming into and operating via the metropolis, their messages alternating between recreation info and easy traces like “2.5 miles from history … Experience CPKC Stadium.” The messaging was ubiquitous.

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“There’s teal everywhere now,” Current captain and midfielder Lo’eau LaBonta stated forward of Saturday’s match. “I’ve only heard people talk about our game [Saturday] and not about Sporting [Kansas City, playing a MLS home game later that night]. Don’t get me wrong, I love Sporting as well and I’ve been related to them [through marriage] for a while now, but that’s what I’m hearing, and that’s already different. Our faces are in the airport, on the streetcars. That would have never happened [before]. I bet you back in the day, not one person could name the team or when our game was gonna be on the weekend.”

This is the new regular: girls’s soccer as a watercooler occasion, the ticket that everybody needs. For not less than a few days, the metropolis that simply celebrated one other Chiefs Super Bowl victory was not adorned in crimson and yellow. Instead, downtown buildings and bridges glowed in teal and followers flooded the streets with Current kits.

CPKC Stadium’s grand opening is about resetting the narrative — not simply in Kansas City, the place the earlier staff that LaBonta alluded to (and as soon as performed for) folded in 2017, however about the funding in and requirements for girls’s soccer globally. The NWSL continues to be a chief in elevating the bar for the sport, and an formidable Kansas City possession group is atop that listing. A stadium devoted to an NWSL staff is the new customary.

“Honestly, as kids, that’s what we thought the expectation was,” Current goalkeeper and Kansas native Adrianna Franch stated. “When I [was] like 5 to 8, I was like, ‘I want to be a professional soccer player.’ This is the standard that you expect it to be. I think what that represents and means is everyone who wants to be a professional will know what this standard is.”

Facilities are amongst the greatest challenges in the NWSL even for the most profitable groups. Most NWSL groups are second- or third-priority tenants in stadiums constructed for males’s groups. NWSL groups with out their very own venues miss out on enterprise alternatives, from the incapacity to decide on prime dates and instances for dwelling video games, to restrictions on sponsorships — to not point out paying lease.

Current majority co-owners Angie and Chris Long rushed the launch of the staff in late 2020 out of necessity. They had been wanting into becoming a member of the NWSL and the course of accelerated when the league wanted so as to add a staff to switch the unique Utah Royals. The Longs had a staff (however not even an official title or model) prepared in a few months. Just over three years later, CPKC Stadium hosted its first recreation, and the Current model resonates all through the neighborhood.

The Longs deliberate to construct the staff its personal stadium from the starting as a part of their pitch to the league, initially exploring a website farther outdoors of downtown.

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Angie Long remembers the first questions she received about the concept: “‘Why do you guys need your own stadium? Can’t you just go play in someone else’s stadium?’

“I type of want to know what main profitable sports activities franchise in the world is simply comfortable to sit down again and be a tenant in anyone else’s stadium? And the reality that everybody is asking this query is a little bit ironic, I feel, however it speaks to the unimaginable alternative and certainly one of the the explanation why the development 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 businesspeople who see an opportunity for a return on investment, just like Sixth Street Partners, the majority owner of expansion team Bay FC. They see women’s soccer as an undervalued asset.

Angie Long stated that in the event that they waited round for public funding to construct their very own stadium, they’d nonetheless be ready right this moment. Instead, they spent $18 million of their very own cash on a coaching floor for the staff that opened in 2022. It is certainly one of the finest coaching facilities in the NWSL and plans to develop it and develop the space are already underway. They funded most of the $120 million-plus invoice to complete CPKC Stadium.

CPKC Stadium is a mid-sized gem crafted with consideration to element to make it a first-class expertise for gamers and followers alike. The Longs toured over a dozen completely different stadiums and sports activities arenas seeking inspiration and finest practices for CPKC Stadium. They borrowed refined touches like mesh seating (as a substitute of the traditional plastic seats) from Austin FC’s Q2 Stadium, and a curated native meals expertise from the Golden State Warriors’ Chase Center. Just like the signage round the metropolis, the whole lot is teal, from the seats and the under-roof lighting to the hand cleaning soap and counter tops in a few of the loos.

The stadium sits on the southern financial institution of the Missouri River. It is unmissable from the adjoining Bond Bridge, a main Interstate-29 crossing that had additionally been lit up teal throughout current evenings. It is a part of a bigger improvement mission meant to revitalize Kansas City’s waterfront, the Longs hope.

NWSL commissioner Jessica Berman stated that the legacy of the Longs shall be that they will not be the final to construct their very own stadium, and that they shared their successes with different NWSL homeowners.

“For decades, it has been true that there haven’t been any questions asked about the use of not just public funding but public influence to be able to get a stadium built,” Berman stated at half-time on Saturday. “Although this stadium was privately financed, they needed a lot of support and trust from the city, and that has happened for men’s stadiums and arenas for decades without question.

“That’s what I describe as seed funding. It has allowed for these companies to not solely survive however thrive for the long run, and none of that has ever been accessible to girls’s groups. I feel that is the wholesale change that we will see going ahead, as a result of we’re getting calls not simply from homeowners round our league but in addition from metropolis offials to say, ‘How can we take into consideration this otherwise for our neighborhood? Because we do really acknowledge now that that is a neighborhood asset and we wish this to be a thriving enterprise like the males’s groups.'”

This weekend in Kansas City was a party, from the Friday night VIP launch event with drones that lit up the Kansas City skies, to Saturday’s pregame music festivities and an entertaining game that brought nine goals, tying an NWSL record. It was a party celebrating how far the league has 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 big-time league with teams worthy of their own stadiums. As Current coach Vlatko Andonovski — who coached in that inaugural NWSL game in 2013 — put it: “Completely completely different worlds. There’s nothing that occurred that day [in 2013] you can examine to what occurred right this moment.”