Kansas City NWSL Team Announces Women's Soccer Stadium Project for Downtown KCMO
Privately-funded $70 Million Stadium Is Set to Open in 2024
The owners of Kansas City’s NWSL team announced on Tuesday plans for a new privately-funded $70 million stadium for their team in downtown Kansas City, Mo., that’s set to open in 2024. The stadium will be the first of its kind to be built expressly for an NWSL team in a historic step for women’s soccer in the United States.
The team has signed a 50-year lease for a 7.08-acre site on the east end of the Berkley Riverfront on the Missouri River. The location will eventually be reachable using public transportation via the free KC Streetcar, which has a proposed stop at the Riverfront.
The stadium will seat in excess of 11,000 and be expandable in the future.
Team owners Angie and Chris Long and Brittany Matthews (a former college soccer player who’s the fiancée of Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes) will hold a press conference on Tuesday that includes Kansas City (Mo.) mayor Quinton Lucas.
Things have moved quickly for the team in Kansas City. The group was awarded an NWSL franchise just 10 months ago and welcomed the relocated Utah Royals for the 2021 season. The Kansas City team, which has yet to be named, has played this season at a minor-league baseball stadium but is set to move to Sporting Kansas City’s Children’s Mercy Park for the 2022 and ‘23 seasons before moving to the new stadium in ‘24.
Fútbol with Grant Wahl is a reader-supported soccer newsletter. Both free and paid subscriptions are available. The best way to support my work is by taking out a paid subscription.
The owners also recently announced plans to build a new privately-funded $15 million training facility for the team in Riverside, Mo.
“We knew that playing in a minor-league baseball park wasn’t the right long-term sustainable solution,” Angie Long told me in an interview. “So we really started looking at all our different options. We really liked the idea to be downtown and wanted that urban setting and the ability to get there via public transportation. I think it’s really transformational for Kansas City and will be a great experience for soccer fans.”
“Facilities matter,” her husband, Chris, added. “It’s really critical to match the elite level of our athletes with an elite-level stadium.”
Full disclosure: I’ve been friends with Angie Long since we attended Shawnee Mission (Kan.) East High together and with Chris Long since we went to college at Princeton with Angie. When they and their kids attended the 2019 women’s World Cup in France, I spent a morning with Chris over coffee and realized how much the Longs had gone down the soccer rabbit hole—in a good way. A year later they became NWSL owners.
The stadium, which has been designed by Kansas City’s Generator Studio and will be constructed by JE Dunn and Monarch Build, will have a pavilion that will be open to the public year-round. The owners plan to use the stadium not just for NWSL games but also for music concerts, college and some high school soccer events and potentially international soccer competitions.
“I think this is the right-sized stadium for right now,” Angie Long said. “But we do have the ability to increase capacity over time in a really significant way.”