KANSAS CITY, Mo. — About 15 years ago now, Sporting Kansas City’s new ownership group contemplated a site for a soccer-specific stadium, making good on a vision Lamar Hunt had told them would be a necessity for survival in this town.
The initial two options, brightly as the renderings had glowed on paper, fell through without a shovel hitting the dirt. As they examined a third, a spot near the Kansas Speedway, principal owner Cliff Illig stiff-armed the pretty pictures.
“I want to start with a list of who’s going to be in the building,” he had said that day. “We’re going to design the building around them.”
The final product was a stadium that would win an international design award before it even hosted a match, a layered tower constructed with locations for its most rabid supporters, suite holders, season-ticket members and everyone in between fitting inside an 18,500-seat venue. It was unique, and that was the point — first-time sports owners, even those who acknowledged they knew little about the sport, had decided they didn’t want to be like the rest.
Fifteen years later, Illig is sitting in one of those fourth-floor suites inside what’s now Children’s Mercy Park on a weeknight before Sporting KC plays in a U.S. Open Cup quarterfinal. He’s sharing that story — about his early days in sports ownership — when my question is actually about the 2026 World Cup in KC.
A topic that I thought was quite different.
But on second thought...
“I think that tells you who we are — that us stepping in and saying, ‘Hey, let’s go take a whack at this World Cup opportunity’ was not that far off of how we do things,” Illig says.
Meaning?
“You can look at something as an opportunity to do something somebody hasn’t done before. Go figure it out.”
A brief pause.
“Just don’t screw it up.”
He sticks the landing on that last sentence, letting it breathe for a moment before marching on. While the story is initially told to provide an example of a group willing to take chances, its moral is ultimately a group that took advantage of the chance.
Of opportunity.
And no opportunity, not for this city, will be greater than the one that arrives in 2026. Illig cannot emphasize that enough. The magnitude of what’s coming — the world’s largest sporting event — is the idea behind this conversation. Illig and Clark Hunt, the Chiefs chairman and owner, were the Kansas City bid’s co-chairs, an effort also led by bid director Katherine Holland and Kansas City sports commission president Kathy Nelson. The names of those who contributed is exhaustive, as it had to be.
Safe to say, though, hundreds of Kansas Citians would not have gathered inside the Power & Light District a week ago to celebrate its place as a host city in the 2026 tournament without those plans for a soccer-specific stadium two decades earlier. Or without the re-brand and resurgence of Sporting KC and its complementary world-class training facilities. Or, therefore, without the big-picture vision of its principal owner who, hours after Kansas City learned it would be included, opened up a notebook and began writing.
“I’m not a big believer in Field of Dreams — that all you gotta do is build it and magically great things are going to happen,” Illig says. “I fundamentally believe you gotta figure it out. You gotta work through it. And I’m absolutely committed to that here in Kansas City. We will be the very best example of how to host and present the World Cup.”
Illig does not yet know how much freedom Kansas City will have in the experience it provides the World Cup attendees. This is FIFA’s tournament, after all. But the KC bid is proceeding as though it will be provided a long leash, because, well, why the heck not?
Some of those finer details are under wraps as they’re being developed, at least for now, before FIFA provides the green light. But most are quite obvious — think watch parties on steroids and fan fest events throughout the city. They have to put on a show for thousands, as Illig put it, that will be viewed by billions.
There’s a lot to consider, and, frankly, a lot of people who can’t wait to consider it.
“Kansas City has an opportunity to really project to the world what Kansas City is, what we’re all about, what kind of people we’ve got, what kind of lifestyle we’ve got, what kind of economy we’ve got,” Illig says. “That’s a huge opportunity for us, and it’s not an opportunity we’ll ever see again — or at that scale.”
This tournament — this opportunity — is deeply personal for Illig, who is contributing significant finances to help pull it all off, as are Hunt, Royals chairman and CEO John Sherman and others.
We might have landed the World Cup by selling FIFA on Kansas City over the past half-decade. We might see the games as a chance to sell the rest of the world on Kansas City in 2026.
Illig sees the into the margins.
“Kansas City,” he says, “cannot miss the opportunity to significantly amplify our long-term potential.”
That piece, he says, does not wait on the 2026 matches. It came the moment this city’s name appeared on that selection show. If used properly, the World Cup can have residual effects in avenues that have little to do with soccer itself.
It’s now a recruiting tool the business world has not yet enjoyed at its scale. The civic pride is strong enough here to believe this is a destination, not flyover country, and that’s a bit easier case to make when this is now the company you keep — New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Dallas, the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, Philadelphia, Atlanta and Houston.
“The potential of the World Cup helps us demonstrate Kansas City as a more attractive place to have a career, to grow your family,” Illig says. “So one of the questions is what should we be doing from a communications strategy standpoint in the next year. I’m going to suggest that maybe one of the things we have to focus on is making sure that everybody in Kansas City, everybody in our region understands the importance of the World Cup.”
Part of the next several months will include Illig and Hunt selling corporate sponsors here on exactly that. That’s the path forward in the immediacy, though the more I speak with those involved, it’s also the path for how we got here.
Kansas City bid officials recognized the vast nature of a World Cup and its potential for long-lasting effects. They demonstrated to FIFA that they were ready to dream big — but they never overlooked a small detail.
When FIFA officials arrived from different corners of the world, the bid organizers had scheduled greeters to be waiting for them at the airport to ensure it wasn’t empty. When FIFA officials arrived at their hotels in Kansas City, they probably couldn’t help but notice the kids playing soccer on the lawn across the street.
“I’m pretty good looking for the things we’re missing, and I could not find something we hadn’t covered,” Illig said. “And I couldn’t find something that I thought we could have done better. And I saw a whole bunch of things in there I really didn’t expect.”
A week ago, it struck me when Sporting KC president Jake Reid said FIFA officials had continually told those involved with Kansas City’s bid that nobody wanted it more than they did. Illig has since spoken with those who would know, and it’s not only the energy but the small details that comprised a big impression.
Sure, KC does not become a World Cup host without a new airport on the way. No doubt the financial components had to be in place. The unification of local and two state governments was likely another requirement. The city checked the boxes that needed to be checked.
But this place had to do more than check the boxes. It ranked 34th in market size last year, and every other American city selected fell into the top 12.
We are the outlier. But while some had discounted us because of size, the KC bid officials flipped a perceived disadvantage into an advantage. They treated it as the biggest thing to come to this city because it is the biggest thing that will come to this city.
FIFA felt that.
And Illig, too. He has the experience in this sort of thing. In 1979, he founded Cerner along with Neal Patterson (another former Sporting KC principal owner until his death in 2017) and Paul Gorup. Cerner grew to the city’s largest private workforce.
There are lessons that stick with Illig. Yes, even those that translate to a World Cup bid.
“If you participate in that journey — that ride — you get to the point where you appreciate the need to anticipate the potential,” Illig says. “How much bigger could this be? What else could we be doing? That’s what drives your plans.”
