Which soccer capital reigns supreme: Atlanta or … Kansas City?

The Midwestern city, famed for its barbecue and Super Bowl-winning Chiefs of American football, has invested more than $650 million into soccer in the last 15 years, including building new stadiums and training facilities.

Now, FIFA World Cup 26 Kansas City consultant Alan Dietrich says “we definitely got a global stamp of approval” as the soccer capital of America.

That’s because four countries chose Kansas City as base camp for this year’s World Cup — including three of the top seven national men’s soccer teams in the world — after a recruitment effort led by Dietrich.

“Far and away, we still have it,” crowed Dietrich, a former executive with the city’s soccer team Sporting Kansas City. “And I would say that Argentina and England and the Netherlands would say, ‘We agree.’”

Along with Algeria, those national teams will all use Kansas City as their home base while traveling to World Cup matches around North America.

Atlanta, in contrast, landed only Uzbekistan’s home base for the tournament.

A trademark

In preparation for the global spotlight, cities are aiming to stake their claim on the sport for longer-term dividends.

Sporting KC had already gone as far as to trademark the term “The Soccer Capital of America.”

Credit: AP

Credit: AP

With the World Cup just weeks away, the team is taking full advantage, announcing a series of “Soccer Capital Summer” events and promoting branded items from sponsors and partners, like a Soccer Capital of America debit card, a heart-shaped Soccer Capital of America box of Russell Stover chocolates and an official Soccer Capital of America coffee from a local chain.

Kansas City’s trademark has left Atlanta officials promoting their city as the “epicenter of soccer.”

“I’m not sure that we need to trademark ‘epicenter of soccer,’” said Atlanta Convention & Visitors Bureau President and CEO William Pate. “You kind of are what people think you are. … (Soccer fans) understand that Atlanta is at the center of all things that are happening (in) soccer across the country and somewhat internationally, as well.”

But for Kansas City, the World Cup and its place in it is a very big deal. The metro area has a population of about 2.3 million, smaller than the Atlanta area was when it was named the host of the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games, and about a third the size of metro Atlanta today

For a lot of people around the world, the World Cup may be “their only time ever hearing about Kansas City,” said U.S. Soccer Federation CEO JT Batson during a talk at a World Affairs Council breakfast in Atlanta on “The Making of America’s Soccer Capital” last week.

Of all the World Cup host cities in the U.S., “Kansas City might be the most excited,” he said.

Jenny Wilson, vice president of tourism development at Visit KC, said, “We’re still a little bit unknown internationally. So long term, you know, I’m hoping that changes.”

“Probably even from a domestic standpoint, Kansas City, you know, still is a little bit unknown to some,” she said.

Extreme recruiting

So how exactly did Kansas City score base camps of some of the best soccer teams in the world?

“You would have to say that they (in Kansas City) certainly have been able to attract … the royalty of soccer,” Pate acknowledged.

Sometimes teams want to focus on training and “don’t want to be in a major city … because you don’t want the distractions,” Pate said. Others point to FIFA politics.

Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC

Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC

Kansas City has some built-in advantages, being “very centrally located” for teams to travel to other World Cup host cities, Batson said. And with decades of professional soccer under its belt, Kansas City also has an array of soccer training facilities for teams to choose from. It has for years been home to U.S. Soccer’s facility for coach development.

But the city’s boosters also went to extreme measures to paint themselves as the most welcoming, soccer-loving town in America.

When FIFA officials came to visit to scout out World Cup host cities in 2021, Sporting KC and the bid committee worried their then-rundown, small airport would be off-putting, so they recruited volunteers to “roam the airport terminal as FIFA’s delegation arrived,” The Athletic reported.

They goal was to “make it look live and friendly,” Dietrich said.

The host committee also arranged for kids to play soccer near the hotel where the FIFA officials were staying, so when they went out they would see how much Kansas City had taken to the sport.

“We were just trying to think of everything,” Dietrich said.

The rivalry to become the top city for soccer is “just all good-natured stuff,” he said.

Other cities could try to lay claim to such a title, if they so chose. Miami has international soccer star Lionel Messi playing on its pro team. Los Angeles has two Major League Soccer teams.

Does the title matter?

Did anyone know that either Atlanta or Kansas City have assumed titles for soccer supremacy?

“I’m not aware that a lot of people walking around Atlanta think of themselves as the soccer capital of America,” said Michael Lewis, a professor and expert on sports marketing at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School.

Had a top Kansas City tourism executive heard that Atlanta considers itself the epicenter of soccer?

“I had not,” Wilson of Visit KC said.

People around the country similarly may be unaware Kansas City calls itself the soccer capital. But “I think everybody is learning that, because we’re touting it a little bit more,” Wilson said.

The relative obscurity of the self-proclaimed capital and epicenter may be because the sport itself doesn’t have the mass fandom of baseball, basketball or the nation’s most popular sport, football.

Soccer is the most played sport in the world but, it’s “still in its infancy, in a sense, in North America,” said Sarah Kate “Skate” Noftsinger, chief business officer of the Atlanta United.

In both Atlanta and in Kansas City, professional football team owners turned to fútbol to build a new fanbase.

Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank “had that vision of, he wanted Atlanta to become the epicenter of soccer in North America,” Noftsinger said. Atlanta United had its inaugural season in 2017 and won the MLS Cup championship in 2018.

Credit: ccompton@ajc.com

Credit: ccompton@ajc.com

Late Kansas City Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt was one of the founding investors in Major League Soccer in the 1990s, and owner of one of the founding 10 MLS teams, the Kansas City Wiz, which became Sporting KC.

Chiefs quarterback Pat Mahomes is a co-owner of Sporting KC and, with his wife Brittany, a co-owner of the Kansas City Current, a National Women’s Soccer League team.

Sporting KC’s stadium has capacity of 18,467 for soccer, while the Kansas City Current has the first stadium built for a women’s professional sports team, with capacity for 11,500.

“It’s not just one facet,” Dietrich said. “That’s why I say Kansas City is undisputed when you look across the full set of criteria.”

Noftsinger offered this rejoinder: “What’s great is there’s competition.”

“I do not know what Kansas City is trying to claim,” she said. “I can tell you that Atlanta, Georgia, is the epicenter of soccer in North America.”

If one were to tally up how much has been invested in soccer in Atlanta, “It’s going to be in the billions,” she said, including the $1.6 billion Mercedes-Benz Stadium, home to the United and the NFL’s Falcons.

There’s also a $50 million grant from Blank for the U.S. Soccer facilities and $330 million Blank is investing to launch a NWSL team in Atlanta, to begin playing in 2028 at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.

Credit: AP

Credit: AP

For the many newcomers to Atlanta, pro soccer has presented an opportunity to take on a new team as their own, Lewis said.

Soccer, with its diverse and international appeal, offers an opening to people who “feel excluded from some of that core fandom” of football, baseball and basketball, he said. When Atlanta United debuted, “Suddenly there was this shiny new soccer team, and they all kind of jumped on.”

“It was kind of a miraculous set of events,” Lewis said, particularly when Atlanta United was barreling toward the championship in 2018, and average match attendance for the season topped 53,000.

Some matches over the years have drawn more than 70,000. The U.S. Men’s National Team friendly matches held at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in March drew more than 66,000 versus Belgium and more than 72,000 versus Portugal.

“When you talk about which city owns soccer … suddenly they’ve gotten to this world-class level of arena and attendance that Kansas City can’t get to,” Lewis said.

But what exactly all the superlatives mean is not completely clear.

“This notion of the long-term benefit of being the capital of soccer, I feel like this is almost more of a speculative idea,” Lewis said. “The hope is it that it ends up being a magnet and something to build local culture around.”

It’s worth noting that both Sporting KC and Atlanta United have struggled on the pitch as the season began this year.

Atlanta United recently ranked 12th out of 15 teams in the Eastern Conference, while Sporting KC ranked last of 15 teams in the Western Conference. Mercedes-Benz Stadium has felt particularly cavernous with thousands of empty seats during Atlanta United home games this season.

“We know that there’s work to do from a on-the-field perspective,” Noftsinger said. And attendance at matches “is still going to lead MLS, but that doesn’t mean that we’re satisfied with it.”

Hope for long-term payoff

The World Cup costs host cities tens of millions of dollars up front, with an oft-stated hope of bringing the economic impact of multiple Super Bowls.

The Metro Atlanta Chamber’s chief economist projects about $500 million in economic impact from visitor spending in Georgia across the eight World Cup matches.

“The growth in relationships and reputation is what pays off for the next generation,” said Metro Atlanta Chamber President Katie Kirkpatrick in a written statement.

Credit: Ben Hendren

Credit: Ben Hendren

And with the new U.S. Soccer facilities on top of that, with 17 outdoor fields and two indoor fields, “really, at all levels of soccer, Atlanta is going to have a huge footprint as we move forward,” Pate said.

Officials in Kansas City also aim to turn the World Cup spark into something more.

“My hope is it’s going to give a spotlight on Kansas City that maybe somebody wasn’t aware of before,” Wilson of Visit KC said. “You know, an Argentina fan who’s watching their team play, and it’s that, ‘My goodness, I need to go see what Kansas City is about.’”

Like the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games for Atlanta, “A lot of what these plays are about is making yourself into a major league city … or a world-class city,” Lewis of Emory said. “Does it pay out? I mean, I think that’s a relatively hard sell.”

For Kansas City, “you can say that everyone in the world will know about Kansas City for a few minutes,” he said.

But Dietrich noted that MLS was birthed out of the 1994 FIFA World Cup, the last time the U.S. played host to the tournament. “I believe a greater wave will follow after (this) World Cup,” he said.

He also hopes that by establishing Kansas City as a soccer capital, Sporting KC might gain national recognition, “like, you know, the Green Bay Packers, where a lot of people across the country would say, ‘the Green Bay Packers are my team.’”

“Kansas City would love that our team starts becoming America’s favorite,” Dietrich said. “There’s work to be done to get there, for sure.”

“We had such a great run back in the (2010s) … You want to build that back up,” he said. “But then I think there’s legacy opportunities with World Cup.”