Welcome to Kansas City, Kansas: The Unlikely New Soccer Capital of the United States

Nearly 20 years ago, players for the Kansas City Wizards were greeted by roughly 70,000 empty seats each time they took the field. In 1997, just one year into their stint as the professional soccer club of Kansas City, Missouri, average attendance had plummeted by more than 4,000 fans from the previous year. Ticket prices quickly followed, dropping to as low as $4. Enthusiasm for the team became so anemic that frisbee-catching dogs were ultimately dispatched for the halftime show, a last ditch effort to entice bodies into the cavernous stadium. Soccer in Kansas City, Missouri, was failing fast.

During the same period, however, neighboring Kansas City, Kansas—often viewed as the meek little brother of Kansas City, Missouri—was undergoing a rapid transformation that would indirectly shake up the region's (and ultimately the country's) soccer scene.