A 5-year plan: How Sporting KC’s Vermes, Reid will define success over next half-decade

Three weeks ago Sporting KC manager Peter Vermes stood in front of some reporters and a small group of fans at the team’s media day.

His opening statement: a tribute to the success the club has had with Jake Reid as president and CEO, and the announcement of a five-year contract extension for Reid to remain in that role.

Reid became club president in 2016 after serving as its vice president of ticket sales and service (2010-11) and chief revenue officer (2012-16). Having been with the franchise since Sporting Club assumed ownership, Reid has had a hand in all of the success that’s ensued — the trophies on the field, and the many accolades off of it.

So when the club has established itself as a mainstay, both on the business side and on the pitch, what does success look like now?

For Reid, success off the field has a lot to do with taking advantage of opportunities presented by the 2026 World Cup.

“If you run a business that you knew five years from now, you’d have this monumental opportunity that would be game-changing for your business, what would that mean?” Reid asked rhetorically. “Most of corporate America can’t fathom that. Whether that’s just the stocks are going to go through the roof, or there is a huge market shift, no one has that.

“We have that.”

Kansas City is set to learn sometime in April or May whether it’s selected as a host city for the 2026 World Cup. Even if that bid falls short, Reid still sees the event’s presence in North America as a massive opportunity to grow Sporting’s footprint in a larger radius from Kansas City.

Specifically, he mentioned Columbia in Missouri; Omaha in Nebraska; Des Moines up in Iowa; Tulsa in Oklahoma and Wichita in Kansas.

“We’ve got to get more people in the funnel watching broadcasts and engaging with the brand,” Reid said. “I’m not even focused on ticket sales for the sake of this — I think it’s just how do we scale that reach so that we become a true Midwestern club?”

Best-case scenario, and Kansas City is awarded a share of hosting the World Cup? Reid likened it to hosting “four or five Super Bowls,” recalling a 2010 match in which Manchester United played at Arrowhead Stadium.

“That was a transformative moment in our history,” Reid said. “It’s the largest team that’s ever been in this city. The next day we went on sale with seat deposits for the new stadium and we did something like 1,500 to 2,000 seat deposits in a day.”

That game helped spur a significant amount of growth in soccer fandom and simultaneously piqued particular interest in what Sporting KC was doing. Hosting World Cup games here in 2026, Reid believes, could have a similar effect.

“If you have a world cup in Kansas City, and you’re a kid between the age of 5 to probably in the early 20s, it’s going to have a massive impact on your perception (of soccer),” he said.

On the field, meanwhile, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Major League Soccer has grown rapidly and drastically in the last three years. But as the league evolves at an exponential pace, stalwart clubs like Sporting still have the same expectations.

“I think the measuring stick in our league now has really come down to playoffs,” Vermes told The Star.

“Making the playoffs first and foremost puts you in a competitive spirit within the league,” he said. “I also think grabbing a trophy here and there over that time period would be success.”

The road to MLS trophies has changed as the league has expanded. The Philadelphia Union won a Supporter’s Shield in 2020 with a team comprised almost entirely of smart-budget buys and academy products. On the flip side, NYCFC won the MLS Cup in 2021 following significant investments of money and scouting.

“With 29 different ownership groups, that means there’s an individual level of competitiveness that goes with each one of those ownership groups and clubs,” Vermes said. “That means the spend is different, the market size is different, there are just so many other pressure points that go with it that change everything.”

Vermes and Reid continue to view their Pro Player Pathway as the lifeblood for the future of the club. Being a small-market team means you have to be smart with your investments and supplement the squad with youth talent that you develop yourself.

Both men spoke, too, about the hindrance posed by the current academy-territory system.

“It’s a simple math problem, at the end of the day,” Reid said. “We need more (territory). We’ve got 2.4 million people in our DMA. Zoom out to Dallas or any of these markets that are just the fertile ground for youth participation, we don’t have enough numbers. We need that 2 to be 8 million.”

Vermes also lamented the fact that clubs can’t dip into other territories to find players in those more fertile markets who might be getting overlooked otherwise.

“There’s only a certain number of kids that are eligible for that team, and you can only put 18-24 kids on a roster,” he said. “Well, what about 25 through a million in their same area? They never get a chance, but those kids actually could come here and play. So that has to change, and has to change soon.”

For right now, the goal is increasing the scope and size of Sporting KC’s own region.

“How do we make sure we’re finding that kid in Omaha who no one else is looking at?” Reid said. “That’s part of the strategy, to throw a wider net out there, and I think that’s the best way for us here in a market that is fairly small and frankly just historically doesn’t pump out as many great young players.

“We’ve got to do a better job of wrapping our arms around this region, and I think that’s part of our plan.”

This story was originally published March 19, 2022 at 4:40 PM with the headline "A 5-year plan: How Sporting KC’s Vermes, Reid will define success over next half-decade."