Idea to growing force: Angie, Chris Long reflect on first year of KC Current ownership
Angie Long can close her eyes and remember. She thinks it was July, maybe June, but either way she stood at Legends Field moments before the team’s — her team’s — match and got a little lost in the moment.
Angie Long and her husband, Chris Long, run an investment firm in town. They also have four kids, and the story goes that the team-ownership part of their lives began when Chris and one of the kids went to France for the 2019 World Cup. The matches enthralled, with the United States winning it all, but more than that, the Longs were struck by the energy and heft of it all.
“We’ve got to bring this to Kansas City,” Chris remembered thinking.
This week marks one year since the Longs bought a National Women’s Soccer League franchise and relocated it to Kansas City, an act that was, objectively and charitably, at least a little insane. They bought an NWSL franchise … with COVID-19 limitations on crowds still in place … without a stadium in which to play … or a facility in which to train … or a place for the players to live … or, well, really, much of anything except an idea.
That’s what makes that moment stick in Angie’s mind. Five thousand fans in a stadium, most of them seemingly wearing jerseys and other gear representing the team — now called the KC Current — and screaming with anticipation. The whole thing was put together on the fly, with what felt like life-or-death decisions buzzing by constantly, and here it finally felt like the thing had stuck.
“It was just: ‘Holy cow, six months ago this literally didn’t even exist,’” Angie Long said.
A lot of us probably feel like we’ve lived a decade in the last year, but the Longs have been next-level: buying a team, going from zero to 50 employees; filling out a roster; finding places for the players to live; booking a training ground; playing most of the season with a temporary name before launching a new brand; and signing a deal to play at Legends Field last season and then another deal to move to Children’s Mercy Park for the next two years, all while planning their own privately funded riverfront stadium to be ready in 2024.
A year ago, this was all hypothetical. All paperwork. There was nothing tangible. Now the Longs have fundamentally changed sports in Kansas City, adding a fourth pro team, and a roster built around newly acquired U.S. Women’s National Team midfielder Sam Mewis, who is arguably the world’s best player.
“Excitingly challenged,” is how Angie described it. “It’s fun to be building this.”
Not all of it is fun. The Current finished in last place, with the worst goal differential in the 10-team league. They’re in the process of hiring a new coach after moving Huw Williams into a technical-staff role focused on scouting and finding talent.
But the biggest challenge has been even more broad. The NWSL was rocked by a series of allegations of abuse first reported by The Athletic. Half of the league’s head coaches were fired or forced to resign. A sixth team fired its general manager. Players condemned racism in the league, and the players’ union demanded an end to “systemic abuse plaguing the NWSL.”
No allegations were made in or against the Kansas City club, but the scandal touched all corners of the league. Angie Long served on a three-person committee that oversaw league operations until an interim commissioner was named.
“It’s horribly difficult on everyone,” she said. “The cleanup needed to happen. The (change in) balance of power, with new leadership in the league, with owners who think like Chris and I think, happened. It was a very difficult time for so many players, for so many in the league, but it also is proving to be a catalyst for change that really needed to happen.”
What is that change?
“Listening to players,” she said. “Partnering together with them. Professionalizing the league, right? From the beginning, that’s the word that probably sticks with me through this whole process. Things really needed to be professionalized. They’re professional athletes who need to be treated like professional athletes, and need to behave like professional athletes. Just a mindful shift toward the investment side, toward the player-first side, and I think we’ve made a lot of strides in that direction.”
The Longs have turned their franchise into an example of what professionalized means. They will be first NWSL team with its own training facility, and the first to build its own stadium.
Ten years ago, the rebranding of what is now Sporting Kansas City and the construction of what is now Children’s Mercy Park was seen as a model for how Major League Soccer could legitimize itself and grow.
That’s not totally dissimilar to what the Longs are doing now. At the moment the Current are the NWSL’s exception in many ways. The expectation is that the rest of the league will catch up.
“I love what it means for us, and I love the example it sets for the league,” Angie said. “I think we’re raising the bar everywhere, and if other teams want to compete, they’re going to need to follow.”
Angie mentioned the owners of teams in Orlando, Houston, Los Angeles and San Diego as particularly engaged and forward-thinking. The Current must perform better on the field to truly be seen as a model for the league, and that will require more than trading for Mewis and hiring a new coach.
But it’s also true that, in a lot of ways, last year’s on-field results can be viewed as irrelevant to the greater cause. Dell Loy Hansen owned the Utah Royals — who, coincidentally, had relocated to Salt Lake City from an untenable ownership in Kansas City in 2018 — before selling amid allegations of a toxic work environment.
The Longs could have fairly asked for more time to get their operation off the ground but agreed to work on an accelerated timeline and play the 2021 season in Kansas City. They wanted to win — the trade for Mewis is only the most obvious recent proof of their ambition — but they also needed to build out a competent organization.
Angie said owning a team is more work than she expected, and also more rewarding than she expected. The Longs’ kids are obsessed. Their employees at Palmer Square have been supportive. The couple say the reception they’ve gotten from soccer fans, strangers and the media has been encouraging.
This is a wild time to own a pro-sports team, especially a women’s team. Women’s sports are showing rapid growth in interest and revenue and in many ways align well with the shift away from cable and toward streaming options. Synergy with NFTs, cryptocurrency, online gaming and gambling are changing the business of professional sports on all levels. It’s a lot to take in.
One thing that sticks out about the Longs is their collective positive energy. If we’re honest, with the mountains that awaited them a year ago, one could wonder if that was naivety. But in 20 months the Longs moved, rebranded and built out a professional soccer organization.
They became the league’s first team to build a training facility, and then the first to commit to building its own stadium, and then they traded for a global star. Their positive energy wasn’t naivety.
It was foreshadowing.