How Kansas City’s thriving 2026 World Cup sets stage for potential 2031 encore
Embodying the best of what the FIFA World Cup might hope to be was the enchanting tale of Lawrence adopting Algeria and being loved right back.
Lifetime memories were created with Lionel Messi’s hat trick, goalkeeper Eloy Room’s sublime performance for Curacao, the Netherlands’ Oranje Fanwalk through the heart of the city and the absurd late-match dramatics that propelled both Austria and Algeria into the knockout round.
“That’s one of the coolest and more unique things that I think I have ever experienced,” Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas said in an interview with The Star. “Everybody won.”
While he was referring to the last of that list, the same could be said more widely (albeit not universally) over the last few weeks with the energy around the area.
It all reminds Lucas of the Royals’ postseason runs in 2014 and 2015 — weeks during which, he said, “it was almost like you had this hall pass from your principal” to get out and be part of it all. And that there still can be “this almost childlike joy” to be had through sports.
Measuring that is no simple feat, especially when it comes to overall economic impact, hotel nights and businesses that enjoyed booms vs. those disillusioned. Some of it will be subject to the old accounting saw for seeing what you want to see: If you torture the numbers long enough, you can get them to confess to anything.
But just a few key data points speak to one undeniable conclusion we’ll come right back to:
Along with the aforementioned magical moments, “Kansas City Stadium” (Arrowhead) drew near-capacity crowds of 275,079 through the four group stage matches as the two most consequential matches remained to be played July 3 (Round of 32) and July 11 (quarterfinal).
Through 12 of its 18 originally scheduled dates, Fan Fest has drawn more than 200,000 fans — 13% of which have been international fans scanned in from 150-plus nations.
Consider, too, that Kansas City was the No. 1 U.S. local television market for FIFA World Cup 2026 through the first 54 matches with a 3.8 rating and 16 share.
With all that and plenty else, Kansas City hasn’t just validated itself thus far but also has put itself in a prime position to be a 2031 FIFA Women’s World Cup host — among any number of other future possibilities in the city and connected with the Chiefs’ new stadium to be built in Kansas.
In this case, maybe not merely as a host but with an emerging notion of being the ultimate one for an event expected to be awarded this fall to the joint USA-Mexico-Costa Rica-Jamaica bid — a bid that has no publicly known competition so far.
“I see us hosting a final,” Kathy Nelson, who leads both Visit KC and the Kansas City Sports Commission, told The Star. “We should host the final for the Women’s World Cup.”
That would have a particular resonance because of the NWSL’s Kansas City Current role in pioneering an entirely new horizon in women’s sports with the first stadium purpose-built for a women’s professional team — a stadium that with planned additional capacity would be able to host earlier matches.
“We think our city is electric and on fire right now ... and you sprinkle on women’s sports for the city? My gosh, it should be held here,” she said. “We just have to find a path to make it happen.”
Few would know more about such a path than Nelson, who over the course of years was an essential catalyst in making Kansas City one of 16 hosts for the 2026 World Cup despite — or is it because of? — being the smallest of them all.
The smoothest part of that terrain is self-evident in what you see if you go anywhere near the nerve centers — including more regionally in a number of cases.
But it’s also in what’s been established out of view: a rapport with FIFA, a dynamic Nelson described as vital familiarity and trust formed over time.
Between that and the daily occurrences and stories and images of Kansas City being sent out around the globe, she added, “You can’t buy that kind of advertising, so it makes it easier for us to welcome the world back.”
Easier, too, for having the firsthand know-how to get it done, both in terms of what resounds in the bid process and how to execute it — as KC2026 CEO Pam Kramer and her “team of teams” have demonstrated.
As for the more challenging elements, start with the fact that Kansas City is one of 35 cities or metro areas in the initial bid of the U.S. Soccer Federation and the other nations submitted last fall. Twenty-eight of those were U.S. cities or areas.
It’s not yet clear, Nelson said, how many sites will have the opportunity to host a tournament that after 2027 in Brazil will be expanded from 32 to 48 teams as the men’s tournament has in 2026.
The bid book proposed 20 sites overall, including 14 in the USA, but it remains to be seen whether FIFA would approve that format, the 16-site setup it’s employing now or another model.
Then there are some uniquely Kansas City parts to work through.
With the Chiefs seeking to be out of Arrowhead in their new stadium by then, front and center are questions about the fuzzy future of Arrowhead’s viability for a Women’s World Cup — not to mention 2031 Rugby World Cup games that would be played there if Kansas City secures that bid:
Who’s going to pay to keep Arrowhead live, after all, and how?
For that matter, who’s going to pay once again for all it took to make this one work?
Surely it’s been in the hundreds of millions between safety and security, transportation and Fan Fest — which has been free. It’s hard to know to what degree new commitments would be forthcoming from all the key federal, state and city resources — as well as millions from sponsors.
More broadly when it comes to financing, any prospective host entity or city will have to ask itself if it wants to again submit to FIFA’s avaricious new financial demands — ones that have enabled it to effectively control most related revenue that hosts are paying to furnish. As Fortune put it, “In effect, (it is) a franchise model in which the franchisees pay to operate the business and the franchisor keeps the receipts.”
Perhaps some combination of all that will be prohibitive when it comes to matches in 2031.
If so, or even if not, there’s another sort of way Kansas City will be in play from this experience: base camps. Having hosted Algeria in Lawrence and three in the metro area (Argentina, England and the Netherlands), it’s evident that we’d be in line for that sort of presence again as what Nelson calls the “base camp mecca.”
So, yes, it’s impossible to know for a variety of reasons how this next endeavor will unfold. And even how all this will translate in the years and decades to come in terms of everything from local legacy to events lured here, from international business opportunities or cultural engagements.
But no doubt about this: Riding the wake of so much international attention for the recent exploits of the Chiefs, Kansas City has achieved traction and momentum as never before — and more credibility to convert it into plenty more yet.