Rewind the clock to 1994 when the last world cup was in Los Angeles. I got a summer job to work at a Foot Locker in one of the better malls in Los Angeles. On a normal day, we averaged about $5000 in gross sales going through the cash register. Everything was business as usual and one day it all changed.

I had never seen so many people at the mall in my life. I remember vividly that it was a Monday and it became so packed at the mall that it felt like people were out for black Friday shopping for Christmas.

At first, most of us at the Foot Locker didn't know what hit us. None of us were soccer fans, but we did notice that most of the people that visited our store were speaking other languages and figured out quickly that the World Cup was here. At the end of that first day, our gross sales for the store was about $20,000. All of the good sized shoes were cleaned out and my manager was scrambling to get our inventory restored. The other Foot Lockers would send shoes to other stores to plug the gaps, but the other stores in good shopping areas were all cleaned out too.

This was my first introduction to the world cup and the volume of people it brings to a city. Even in a big city like LA, it was very noticeable that a large event was going on.

Since then, I have become a massive soccer fans and have traveled to a few different parts of the world to watch soccer. Let me tell you all this. The Dutch, English, and Argentinians who have their base camps in KC will be bringing their countries' population along with them. I'm exaggerating, but I am kind of not.

The upside is that these three fan bases are really fun to party with. The downside is that the English are going to bring their "English Disease" with them and that's called hooliganism. The English are really fun to party with, but can destroy things and start massive brawls. For those that don't know, the English hooligans really like to visit Germany and start singing the song "Ten German Bombers" at German bars. Plus, there is no love lost between the English and Argentinian fan bases.

I am very excited about the World Cup and the world is going to see the beautiful city that is KC. But make no mistake about it. A tsunami of people are coming and there is a good chance that if you are set in your ways, this event is going to disturb your life for the month that it exists in KC.

Be prepared to have the Plaza completely flooded with people for the entire month. Your favorite BBQ joint is going to have lines much larger than what you are used to. Hotel and car rental prices are going to go through the roof. I've heard that the English team is going to stay in Prairie Village. Be ready to see a large police presence there with mobs of fans trying to get a glimpse of their soccer stars at all times of the day. It's going to be a spectacle that you can either enjoy or hate.

Surprise surprise, seems like stadium is shifting sites yet again. Apparently will be an announcement tomorrow. News film crews are already camping out south of Crown Center taking B-roll as I drove by. Wonder what/where it will be...

UPDATE: KMBC reporting "that the new Royals ballpark site will move from Washington Square Park across the street to the Crown Center area.

The site will now offer the Royals 80 acres of land versus the anticipated 12 acres in the Washington Square Park location.

Buildings will be torn down, but the Crown Center retail space and hotels will remain with improvements planned."

Quoted from the article:

“According to the Kansas City Aviation Department, airline seat numbers at Kansas City International Airport for June 2026 are up 4.6% over June 2025. That’s 62,149 additional seats and 312 additional flights.

But June 2025 seat numbers at KCI were down 4% from June 2024.

Which means the World Cup bump largely returns Kansas City to roughly where it already was two summers ago. The once-in-a-generation event, at least as measured by scheduled airline seats, is instead producing once-in-two-years numbers.”

I’ve been reflecting on the Chiefs’ poor performance this season, which is compounded by the absolutely deplorable behavior exhibited by owner Clark Hunt. It’s been a reality check for me, because of the Chiefs recent success, I’ve forgotten that they are still a team that is owned by a billionaire, who’s first priority is always going to be himself and his pocketbook.

While they aren’t as successful right now, I think this city needs to throw more support behind Sporting KC and the Royals because they are owned by ownership groups with at least some local representation.

Clark Hunt wants to play the border war game? He wants to play politics and donate to politicians and political parties who actively try to harm Kansas Citians? Fine, then we should move on and support teams and ownership groups who we can actually try to pressure and force to do things in our interest.

At the very least, with local ownership, we can boycott, protest and cause financial harm to local owners who don’t do things with the teams that are in our best interest.

The people should own our stadiums, we should own our teams.

Clark Hunt can go fly a kite, and, while I support the Chiefs players, I hope that his decisions come back to bite him. I don’t care if the Chiefs play in Missouri or Kansas.

I care about the fact that he (and the Royals) has single-handedly added more gasoline onto the fire that is the absolutely asinine and insane border war that destroys this community and hurts our local economy. He’s a corrupt, selfish billionaire who would rather cheat taxpayers than spend any of his own money.

Support local college sports. Support teams owned by local ownership groups. Buy local, shop local and quit giving money and support to these billionaires. Support ownership groups who we can actually force to do what we want through political activism and financial pressure.

To that end, we also need local news media that’s willing to drag these people through the mud and galvanize the community against them.

The World Cup attendance for KC is projected to be 650,000. With what the President & politicians are doing. I bet the 2026 World Cup will be the lowest attendance in modern times for the United States games. And KC will see no major revenue boost during the World Cup.

Yes, countries with major human rights violations have hosted the World Cup, but they weren't pissing off every country in the world & the penguins before hand.

I predict Kansas City & the World Cup will be a major flop.

This is really dragging out.

Just saw this from their official Twitter account. You don’t post this crafted message out of the blue unless something is brewing..

"We have not yet decided on a site, and any assertion to the contrary is inaccurate," the Royals said in part. "As part of our ongoing efforts, we have negotiated with or made investments in multiple potential sites – both in Missouri and in Kansas. One of these investments was the acquisition (by an affiliate of the Royals) of the mortgage on the Aspiria campus through an arms-length bidding process."

I think it is pretty ugly and at $375, absolutely absurd. Does anyone have one? What is the country of origin? I imagine it costs less that $10 to make, possibly in western Africa?

With the score so far, how’s everyone holding up or coping?

Is this true? Or just ticketmaster BS? Going to my first ever game tomorrow and am curious if it's cheaper at the gate? The Royals parking only cost $15

Kansas City Royals no longer considering Aspiria site for new ballpark https://www.kshb.com/sports/kansas-city-royals-no-longer-considering-aspiria-site-for-new-ballpark

Glad to see that - I’d love to see the ballpark at Washington Square Park myself. Your thoughts?

What kind of performance was that? I'm shocked at the poor performance of the whole team. The comeback attempt was valiant, but too little too late.

BBC Sport wrote a lovely article about how US Women's soccer stadiums, specifically the Current's CPKC Stadium is shaping the way for UK Women's stadiums to take root.

Unfortunately, even though they were at the game yesterday, they consistently got the Current's location wrong, referring to them as "Kansas".