Patrick Mahomes traded football for soccer on Saturday as he and his wife Brittany headed to the opening night of Kansas City Current Stadium on the first day of the NWSL season.
Built at a cost of nearly $120 million on the banks of the Missouri River, with the downtown skyline just to the south. CPKC Stadium represents one of the few facilities in the world which was built expressly for use by female athletes.
The 11,000-seat stadium, which is almost entirely privately funded, will be christened on Saturday when the Current play Portland Thorns.
Mahomes and his wife, a college football player, took center stage at the ribbon-cutting ceremony alongside current Chairman and CEO Chris Long, Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas and NWSL Commissioner Jessica Berman.
The couple then made their way to the stadium and onto the field as the thousands of fans in attendance cheered them on.
Patrick Mahomes and his wife Brittany attended the grand opening of Kansas City Current Stadium
Chris Long gives Mahomes a high five as Brittany and Kansas Mayor Quinton Lucas looks on
The couple posted a selfie of them on their way to the game on Instagram, captioning it “KC Baby”
Most of the league’s fourteen NWSL teams rent stadiums, or if they are owned by a Major League Soccer club, they play in venues built for the men.
But the vision of the Current’s ownership group, led by Chris and Angie Long and including investors like Chiefs quarterback Mahomes and Brittany, was to build its own facilities.
They started with an $18 million purpose-built practice facility and then turned their attention to the stadium, where they could control standards, scheduling and most importantly, revenue.
The predecessor to the Current, known as FC Kansas City before it filed for bankruptcy in 2017, played at various times at a high school football stadium, a college football stadium and the training field of MLS club Sporting KC.
When the club reformed as the Current in 2021, it began playing in a minor league ballpark before moving a few blocks to Children’s Mercy Park, one of the jewels of MLS but a stadium that nevertheless belonged entirely to someone else.
Season tickets have been sold out for months and demand for single-game seats is so high that some fans are already wondering when the stadium will expand. It is designed so that seating can be added in the future.
Yet the construction of the CPKC Stadium – the naming rights were sold to the Canadian Pacific Kansas City railway – was not without criticism.
The 11,000-seat stadium will be christened on Saturday when they play against Portland Thorns
Season tickets have been sold out for months and demand for single-game seats is high
However, the construction of the CPKC stadium was not without hurdles due to traffic problems
Some worry about property values and traffic congestion, others about a lack of parking; the club recently said spots would cost $50 per match, and many fans took to social media to express their outrage.
The club hopes many will take advantage of ride-sharing and public transportation options to alleviate parking concerns.
The timing couldn’t be better in Kansas City either, where a golden age of the sport is in full swing.
The Royals, who won the World Series in 2015, plan to build a new downtown stadium by 2028 as part of a more than $2 billion public-private partnership.
The Chiefs are coming off back-to-back Super Bowl titles, will try to become the first team in NFL history to three-peat this season, and are aiming for an $800 million renovation of their own at Arrowhead Stadium.
Sporting KC remains a popular draw, as do several minor league teams in the area, while the NCAA wrestling championships and Big 12 basketball tournaments will soon take place at the nearby T-Mobile Center.
