World is watching how Kansas City reacts: How those P&L parties became our thing
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Rob Thomson proposed hosting World Cup viewings at Kansas City Live in 2010.
- Sporting KC organized watch parties in the Power & Light District’s open living room.
- The inaugural viewing had minimal setup, a single trash can and no HDTV present.
During the 2010 FIFA World Cup, Rob Thomson, Sporting Kansas City’s chief commercial officer, came up with an idea.
Sporting KC’s office at the time was a couple of blocks away from the Power & Light District. Thomson and the team believed fans would enjoy watching World Cup games at KC Live! — the entertainment hub’s open space “living room.”
It sounded cool, but would anyone show up?
“That first game, there was one trash can out there,” Thomson said.
And no HDTV.
But the action was riveting. In the first soccer watch party there, the U.S. surprisingly played England to a 1-1 tie and those in attendance cheered wildly. So encouraged was Thomson that he took the next step: courting media coverage.
More fans showed up for the second match, a 2-2 draw against Slovenia. They were charged up to see the U.S. side erase a two-goal halftime deficit.
Now the P&L soccer watch party was a thing, but Thomson played one more card: ESPN held the U.S. broadcast rights for the World Cup, and baseball reporter Pedro Gomez was in town working on a Royals story.
Thomson got in touch and showed him fan-reaction clips of the earlier games.
Gomez loved the images and persuaded ESPN to start showing cut-ins of charged U.S. supporters cheering goals from the Power & Light.
An event was born. But more than that, the seeds of Kansas City as a self-proclaimed soccer capital were planted. Sixteen years later, few could have envisioned the opportunities those gatherings would bring.
The influence of KC’s P&L watch parties literally bolstered Kansas City’s reputation as a worthy World Cup host-site candidate — in spite of its smallish size.
Not only was Kansas City creating an impression as a soccer-crazed town, it was proving to itself that the world’s most popular sporting event could work here.
“What those did for us early on was to create a belief, even for us, that you could galvanize this community around soccer,” Sporting KC president Jake Reid said.
For more than 15 years, broadcasts looking for images of soccer celebrations after U.S. goals and victories have had a go-to destination in KC. At World Cup after World Cup — for both the men’s and women’s tournaments — mostly young fans would pack the P&L, which has room for about 6,000 fans.
Reactions both delirious and dejected have become a staple on national and global soccer telecasts.
For a U.S. women’s World Cup game in 2023, the place was packed — at 3:30 a.m. Central Time.
Fans in Kansas City became part of the narrative. During this year’s World Cup, which includes matches at nearby Kansas City (Arrowhead) Stadium, P&L crowd shots have been customary.
At the U.S. game in Santa Clara, California on Wednesday, a Kansas City reaction to Malik Tillman’s free kick goal was shown ... inside the stadium in Santa Clara.
“KC Live! was built for moments like this,” said John Moncke, president of the Power & Light District. “From the moment fans arrive it feels more like being at a match than watching it.”
As a starter on the 2014 U.S. World Cup team, retired Sporting KC legend Matt Besler remembered how the American squad never ventured far from its hotel in Brazil. Teammates would gather around big-screen TVs in the lobby to watch the other games.
“And during commercials or halftime, they’d show live feeds from around the world,” said Besler, who grew up in Overland Park. “England, Hong Kong, other places, but they would always show Kansas City, the Power & Light District on the live feed.
“I remember just looking up, and going, ‘Guys, that’s the Power & Light! I drink beer there!’ And it looked so cool on the broadcast ... I felt so much pride being from Kansas City at the World Cup.”
Even with games broadcast at this year’s FIFA Fan Fest at the World War I Museum and Memorial — and watch parties scattered across surrounding communities — the P&L continues to pack its living room with fans for big games.
Improvements totalling $10 million were made this year. The upgrades included a high-definition video board, ribbon boards and boosts to audio and lighting.
“It’s a downtown experience built around the world’s biggest game,” Moncke said.
For the past few weeks, it hasn’t been just the U.S. games drawing all the attention. Big crowds have watched games involving Mexico and Argentina. And fans from the Netherlands turned the P&L into an orange wave as their “Orange FanWalk” started at KC Live!
When the Power & Light District was planned — it opened nearly 20 years ago, in 2007 — soccer wasn’t the driving force. But sports played a major role in downtown KC’s rebuild.
The Big 12 basketball tournament had been played in Kansas City in some fashion since the 1940s. But in 1999, the league announced it was relocating the tourney to Dallas and Oklahoma City.
The conference’s message to Kansas City was clear: Build a better venue than Kemper Arena.
In a campaign led by Mayor Kay Barnes, a new downtown arena won voter approval in 2004, and the extra sweetener was an $850 million entertainment district being developed by the Baltimore-based Cordish Company. It would be located across Grand Avenue from the new arena.
On a parallel track to this downtown revitalization was the rise of Sporting KC, the Major League Soccer team formerly known as the Wizards.
Kansas City’s foundation as a soccer town was built largely on Lamar Hunt’s deep interest in the sport, and the Chiefs’ founder landed an original MLS franchise in the mid-1990s.
The Wizards of Tony Meloa, Peter Vermes and Preki won the MLS Cup in 2000. But the team struggled to gain wider appeal.
That trajectory started to change by the end of the decade. In 2010, the Wizards played a friendly against Manchester United at Arrowhead Stadium before a remarkable crowd of 52,000.
A year later, the team, having been sold by Hunt to Neal Patterson and Cliff Illig a few years earlier, took the pitch as the rebranded Sporting KC.
They wore slick new kits and played home games at soccer-specific Sporting Park, the envy of the league at the time. The team would soon feature real stars, too, in the likes of KC native Belser and wily midfielder Graham Zusi.
In 2013, Sporting KC played host to the MLS All-Star Game and then won the MLS Cup.
Kansas City’s winning ways continued in 2018, when the U.S., along with Mexico and Canada, was awarded the World Cup.
Its reputation was solidified four years later when FIFA announced Kansas City had been awarded the right to play host to six games, including a 2026 World Cup quarterfinal on Saturday, July 11.
The announcement that day happened in the living room at KC Live!
That’s also were the news conference detailing FIFA’s site visit took place.
Does all of this happen without years of America’s highest-profile game broadcasts including wild scenes at P&L watch parties?
“You’ve had people watching across the country maybe saying, ‘I would have expected that in Chicago or New York or Dallas,’” Reid said. “’But why does Kansas City have the biggest watch party going on?’ All that stuff matters. It all helps.”