The Dutch, donning orange and hopping with happy feet, turned the streets of Kansas City into an undulating conga line. The Argentines like to sing before late-night burgers at Winstead’s, a city landmark. The English? On social media, they name-check cherished taverns — the Peanut and Johnnie’s on Seventh — like natives.
Over the past month, the world’s soccer fans have taken to Kansas City, the smallest American host of these World Cup games, succumbing to the charms of its Midwesterners, its artisan barbecue and its long, but largely overlooked, history with the “beautiful game.”
Not since the 1920s, when Kansas City was the “Paris of the Plains” because it was still a place that served alcohol during Prohibition, has it stood shoulder to shoulder with New York and Los Angeles, local boosters say.
“Kansas City is now in the same conversation as some of these other cities when it comes to tourism and meetings and conventions,” said Kathy Nelson, the chief executive of the Visit KC tourism and convention board and the Greater Kansas City Sports Commission & Foundation. “We may not be in the top 10 population-wise, but we have the right people and the right infrastructure here to make big events happen.”
So far, 344,135 spectators, or an average of nearly 69,000 per match, have filled the stadium here, and Kansas City’s FIFA Fan Festival has welcomed 310,000 people from over 150 countries, led by Ecuador, Mexico, Colombia and Argentina, according to Visit KC. Through the first 92 matches, Kansas City led all U.S. markets in Fox’s World Cup ratings with a 18 share, which means 18 percent of all local televisions turned on at the time of a World Cup game were tuned in to the tournament
Kansas City offered the national teams not only a welcoming and devoted fan base, but also state-of-the-art practice facilities used by the city’s Major League Soccer team, Sporting Kansas City and its National Women’s Soccer League team, the Kansas City Current.
On Saturday, Kansas City will host the quarterfinal match between Argentina and Switzerland.
It has been expensive and, at times, a fraught endeavor: The States of Kansas and Missouri, along with the city, spent nearly $100 million just to build a bus system that stops running after the tournament. And in the preceding months, the American Hotel & Lodging Association issued a report saying 85 to 90 percent of Kansas City hotels had lower-than-expected World Cup bookings. Once the games began, though, the rooms filled up, hoteliers said.
The seed for this moment was planted more than six decades ago when Lamar Hunt, one of Kansas City’s most influential businessmen, became smitten with soccer after watching a match in Dublin. Mr. Hunt, who owned the Kansas City Chiefs, became enthralled by the pageantry and passion of the fans, especially during World Cup tournaments.
In 1994, he was instrumental in luring the World Cup to the United States for the first time, but was disappointed that he couldn’t persuade FIFA, the sport’s global governing body, to bring the tournament to Arrowhead Stadium, where the Chiefs play.
Mr. Hunt may be best known as the team owner who named the National Football League’s championship game the Super Bowl. But he also laid the foundation for professional American soccer, co-founding the North American Soccer League in 1968 and Major League Soccer in 1996.
After his death in 2006 at age 74, his son Clark Hunt continued lobbying FIFA to bring the World Cup to the Kansas City area, whose population of 2.3 million is dwarfed by the nearly 20 million in the New York metropolitan area.
“My dad was captivated by the fans and the singing and chanting he heard at matches,” Clark Hunt, the chief executive of the Chiefs, said in an interview. “He loved Kansas City and Arrowhead Stadium. He loves the sport of soccer, and having the World Cup come to K.C. and all those things come together was really meaningful to him.”
The legacy of Lamar Hunt was also a big draw for international soccer officials.
“Even 20 years after my dad passed away, there was an understanding of how important he was to the development of soccer in the United States, and there was a real feeling that they wanted to bring the games to Lamar Hunt’s favorite stadium,” his son said.
Clark Hunt, whose Chiefs have won three Super Bowls in the past six years, did not want to talk about the new season and or his team’s championship prospects. He shared his father’s passion for the other football, playing soccer at Southern Methodist University and attending 11 straight World Cups.
The Hunts understood that the world’s fans would love their city, and that its denizens would love them back.
Tens of thousands of fans wearing the powder-blue-and-white jerseys of Argentina, the red and white of Tunisia and the yellow, blue and red of Ecuador groove elbow to elbow for watch parties and music at the Fan Festival outside the National WWI Museum and Memorial. Starting at the airport, welcome signs are tattooed on billboards, grocery stores, McDonald’s bags and a parade of taverns.
At Johnnie’s on Seventh, the flags of all 48 countries in the field hang as a steady stream of backers from Mexico, Croatia and the Netherlands link arms when not reaching for beers. (In the case of Mexico’s backers, Scotch and pineapple juice is the drink of choice.)
“Everyone has been joyous and respectful — every night is a different world party,” a bartender, Tony Giblin, said. “The Dutch have been stellar. I’m sorry they got knocked out.”
Ryan Rafferty, a co-owner of Conroy’s Public House, recently returned from a wedding in Brazil where he experienced a whole nation rooting for its team. He contrasted that with the sense of community that converged on Kansas City.
“Our biggest night, we had Colombians, Ecuadorians, the Scottish and Netherlands,” Mr. Rafferty said. “One group would be singing in one corner, the other in another. What’s been cool is that everyone is rooting for everyone else.”
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