Sporting Kansas City CEO discusses decision to let fans back in stadium for home games
In two weeks, Sporting KC fans will return to the floodlit stands of Children’s Mercy Park, watching their team live for the first time since early March.
Sporting KC is allowing a 14 percent-of-capacity crowd inside Children’s Mercy Park — that’s a little over 2,500 fans — for upcoming home games starting Aug. 25 against the Houston Dynamo.
MLS resumes its regular season in teams’ home venues following the success of the MLS is Back Tournament in Orlando, where Sporting KC made it to the quarterfinals of the tournament before losing to Philadelphia.
The decision to allow fans back in the league’s stadium means Sporting KC’s Aug. 25 game will be the first major sporting event open to the public in Kansas City since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. MLS will be the first major men’s league in the United States to allow fans to attend competitions in person.
“It doesn’t make a lot of sense (financially), to be honest with you,” Jake Reid, Sporting KC’s CEO and president, said Monday of allowing fans to return. “I think the driving force is not financial in this decision whatsoever. If financial (motivation) was the driver, this would probably not be a great decision, like most things we’ve done in 2020.”
For Sporting KC’s next three home games, tickets will only be available to season ticket-holders and will be distributed via a draft system. The club will reevaluate the process of obtaining tickets as the COVID-19 situation continues to evolve.
Sporting KC (4-0-1) resumes its season on the road against the Minnesota United on Aug. 21.
“For us, this is not political whatsoever — that’s not even in the decision-making process,” Reid said. “We’ve tried to operate off the facts. We’ve listened to the city and the state, and that’s been the sole driver.”
“So do I expect some folks to be excited: yes. Do I expect (other) folks to not be excited? Yes. There’s always going to be two sides to the story, but for us it’s just been kind of what do the numbers tell us and what do the experts say, and that’s how we’ve come to the conclusion.”
Reid said that the club was actually cleared to allow even more fans into the stadium but has opted to remain “uber-conservative” in its decision to cap capacity at 14 percent.
Reid said the club circulated surveys to season-ticket members in recent months and a large portion of respondents said they would be happy to attend games if the correct protocols were in place. Although he did not cite any specific survey, concerns have been raised among fans about one particular survey that was sent out to season-ticket members in July.
The first question of the survey asked respondents whether they were planning to attend any Sporting Kansas City games in 2020. If “No” was selected, that fan would be excluded from a lottery system to obtain tickets for the remainder of the 2020 season.
Sporting KC co-owner Robb Heineman tweeted out a poll on May 18 asking fans if they would attend a professional sporting event in Kansas City that weekend if they could.
With 1,501 votes cast, 69.3 percent of participants voted “No” and 30.7 percent “Yes.”
The seven-day average for new cases in Kansas stood at 183 on May 18. That figure is now at a seven-day average of 401 new cases per day as of Sunday, Aug. 9.
“I try not to pay attention to social media or anything else these days because it’s so polarizing that it’s not a good metric to use to make decisions,” Reid said. “So for us, we try to just look at the facts and talk to the experts who actually know what they’re doing and that’s how we’ve made a decision.”
To combat the potential for spread of the virus at Sporting KC home games, the club is implementing several social distancing guidelines.
Along with the expected requirement of mask-wearing at all times inside the stadium, fans will be asked to arrive in staggered intervals, depending on where they’re sitting. Fans will also be dismissed from the stadium in a staggered manner, Reid said, similar to “the old church view of dismissal.”
Along with the expected requirement of mask-wearing at all times inside the stadium, fans will be asked to arrive in staggered intervals, depending upon where they’re sitting, and have their temperatures checked before they enter. Fans will also be dismissed from the stadium in a staggered manner, Reid said, similar to “the old church pew dismissal.”
Foot-traffic flow around the concourse will be revised and all concessions and retail stores will be open in order to spread out fans across the stadium. No cash will be accepted for transactions in order to minimize contact between fans and workers.
There will also be a 20-foot tarp barrier around the pitch to further distance fans from the players.
“It’ll be a very different experience to what we’re used to, what the fans are used to,” Reid said. “Saying 2,500 fans when we’re used to 20,000 sounds like not a lot, but we’re extremely concerned (that) if we’re not careful and (don’t) have the right processes in place, that could be a problem.”
This story was originally published August 10, 2020 at 1:28 PM with the headline "Sporting Kansas City CEO discusses decision to let fans back in stadium for home games."