NWSL, KC Current Set New Standard with CPKC Stadium

There are ways to open a season. This year, there is also the way the National Women’s Soccer League will open the season.

There will be history at 1 p.m. ET on March 16 when ABC shows the Kansas City Current hosting the Portland Thorns at the new CPKC Stadium, the first stadium purpose-built for a professional women’s sports team and the latest in a series of investments made by co-owners Angie and Chris Long since bringing a NWSL franchise back to Kansas City in 2020.

“Why do you guys need your own stadium? Why can’t you play in somebody else’s stadium?” Angie Long said when describing the project’s origin. “Well, I don’t know what other successful major sports franchise is content to be playing in somebody else’s stadium as a tenant. Because it’s your own.”

CPKC Stadium has a two-story retail store alongside local food and beverage options for fans, ranging from Thai and barbecue to winery and brewery partners. Vendors will also use reusable cups across the stadium, with no single-use plastic bottles or cups sold.

“I want my girls, girls broadly in general worldwide, to have the same opportunities that I have as a man,” Chris Long said. “March 16 has so many different meanings for us. It’s going to be one of those magical moments.”

The Current sold out of season tickets in December ahead of opening the 11,500-seat stadium — the furthest seat is within 94 feet of the field — which has already held some small corporate events around its hospitality areas. By owning its own stadium, the Current can now host those type of events and generate its own revenue.

“When you’re in someone else’s facility, you fit your schedule around what they have already planned,” Angie Long said, later adding “financially … you’re not paying rent and you’re able to generate revenue through beverage opportunities and other events. There are so many other opportunities to drive revenue.”

Putting the stadium on the banks of the Missouri River was also intentional. The riverfront area will also welcome a five-story, 118-room Origin Hotel and an extension of the free KC Streetcar, scheduled to be complete in 2025.

“Finding a location downtown was important to us — finding a location on the riverfront was absolutely fantastic,” Angie Long said. “We are a catalytic project revitalizing an area … it really means something to me and people from Kansas City.”

“We’re really excited to bring Kansas Citians back to the waterfront,” Chris Long added.

For a stadium of that size and in that location does more than just showcase the Current. It becomes a spot that for those types of ancillary events which can be marketed and bid for within the greater Kansas City sports industry.

“It gives us another resource, another size of a venue to include when we’re bidding on various events or looking at opportunities to host things,” said Katherine Holland, executive director of KC2026 and previously director of marketing & sales for the Greater Kansas City Sports Commission. “It’s a beautiful gem of a resource that puts Kansas City a little bit ahead of the competition certainly when it comes to women’s sports.”

It’s in part because of the visibility of what the Longs have done in building a stadium for women’s sports that makes Kansas City be able to think beyond U.S.-based events as well. The location is already going to host six games in the 2026 FIFA Men’s World Cup, including a quarterfinal.

“It gives us a different size venue at 11,500 seats,” Holland said. “We can look at different events and look to work with the Longs to support those events. And it makes a global impact — the first purpose-built competition venue for a women’s team anywhere, that’s a global impact.”

CPKC Stadium’s opening is the latest in a series of high-profile improvements in the business of women’s sports. Deloitte predicted in late 2023 that women’s elite sports will generate global revenues of $1.28 billion in 2024, the first time annual global revenues will have surpassed $1 billion and more than 300% higher than Deloitte’s valuation in 2020.

“The fact that they are credible and respected businesspeople is making people pay attention in a fundamentally different way,” NWSL Commissioner Jessica Berman told the Kansas City Business Journal. “Because everybody who knows Chris and Angie from prior lives knows that they make decisions for business reasons and smart decisions, and that they are doing this because they believe it will generate a return on their investment. And that is exactly the mindset that we want our current and prospective investors to have when they think about investing in the NWSL.”

The new stadium comes on the heels of a team-specific training center built in Riverside, Missouri, in view of downtown Kansas City. When it opened in June 2022, it became the first standalone dedicated training venue in the NWSL, whose other teams use combinations of available space — often in separate locations — to practice, lift weights, review game tapes, eat or recover.

“We built the training center first on purpose,” Angie Long said. “We think it’s a baseline requirement for a team. … We’re at the point where if you don’t have a training facility it’s going to be hard for your players to keep up.”

Beyond Kansas City, NWSL Continues Growth

The new stadium in Kansas City is part of a broader growth plan for the NWSL, which in April 2023 announced expansion to the Bay Area following the March 2023 announcement of the return of the Utah Royals also for this season.

The teams in Salt Lake City and San Jose will bring the total of NWSL clubs next season to 14, nearly double the number of teams in 2012. The franchises each have history in professional women’s soccer. Utah Royals FC entered the NWSL in 2017 and averaged more than 10,000 fans per game in 2019 before the team moved to Kansas City in 2020. The San Jose CyberRays played three seasons in the WUSA and won the 2001 championship before the league and team folded in 2003. FC Gold Pride played two seasons in the now-defunct Women’s Professional Soccer before folding in 2010.

The NWSL also awarded Boston expansion rights for the league’s 15th team to begin play in 2026. Berman said in January the league is exploring the potential of another expansion location to start play, also in 2026. The expansion announcement continues the NWSL’s increasing number of franchises throughout the United States. A league that 10 years ago started with eight teams reached 12 in 2022 with the addition of two teams in California — Angel City FC and San Diego Wave FC.

Along with the opening of CPKC Stadium, Bay FC and Boston have also committed to building dedicated facilities for their clubs and the new owners of the Portland Thorns have plans to build a dedicated training facility for the club as well.

“We’re the first and we won’t be the last,” Angie Long said. “I think in a lot of ways we’re proof of concept. Every time one team levels up, the expectations for the players become that they deserve this. It’s not a ridiculous expectation, it begins to feel like the new norm.”

“Facilities are a massive piece of the equation,” Chris Long added. “You look at what will happen as we move along as a league. You’ll see some really great infrastructure investing that hasn’t historically been there.”

The 2024 schedule includes 118 matches featured on national platforms throughout the season with a weekly Friday night game on Prime Video, weekly Saturday doubleheaders on ION Network plus regular season matches on CBS, Paramount Plus, CBS Sports Network and the ESPN family of networks including ABC. All remaining matches will be available for free on NWSL Plus, the league’s first domestic direct to consumer streaming platform.

The NWSL Challenge Cup will be staged ahead of the regular-season on March 15 between defending champion NJ/NY Gotham FC and San Diego Wave FC, winner of the 2023 NWSL Shield. Each team in the league will have 26 regular-season matches with a CBA-mandated league break from July 8–14 before the NWSL will break from league play from July 15 to August 18 while the 2024 Olympic Summer Games are held. Eight clubs will qualify for the playoffs with the NWSL Championship on November 23.

“Our league has never been better positioned to capitalize on the momentum the game is experiencing,” said Berman. “The 2024 campaign represents a new era for the NWSL as we continue our efforts to deliver the best product in professional soccer.”