England was “so enamored” with K.C. that it picked the destination for its World Cup base camp despite not playing a group-stage game there and “having to train at the facility of the local MLS team’s youth squad,” according to Beaton & O’Connell of the WALL STREET JOURNAL. Argentina, England, Netherlands and Algeria have all chosen K.C. for their base camps after reaching the conclusion that the city happens to “boast a raft of elite-level training grounds, a temperate climate and a central location.” The last time the World Cup came to the U.S. in 1994, K.C. was not awarded a single game. But “hundreds of millions of investment into soccer infrastructure have turned it into one of America’s soccer capitals.” Sporting K.C. President Jake Reid -- whose facilities will be hosting Argentina and England -- knows that soccer’s superpowers do not ”choose base camps lightly.” He said that England sent scouts to the Central time zone 18 months before the tournament. England “demanded a top-grade training facility, right down to the heat-resistant bermuda grass.” They also needed a city that would “prepare them for a World Cup of midsummer heat waves--without torturing them in the meantime.” England could have “saved itself some early-round travel by staying in the Northeast.” But it figured that being in the middle of the country “might help avoid potential cross-country flights later in the tournament.” Plus, England speculated that staying in flyover country “might keep them under the radar.” Reid said, “We’ve got a very private facility that’s surrounded by a wooded area on three sides” (WALL STREET JOURNAL, 6/9).
TEMPORARY HOLD: THE ATHLETIC’s Adam Crafton noted K.C. is planning a modular jail called the “Temporary Modular Jail Facility,” for which $22M in taxpayer dollars was set aside, in October 2025, and the project was sponsored by Mayor Quinton Lucas. The anticipated influx of World Cup fans was “repeatedly cited by Kansas City politicians as a prime motivation for the temporary jail facility,” which was originally intended to be used for up to five years until a $151M permanent site could be constructed. But the “World Cup Jail” is not operational in time for the World Cup. The initial $22M was followed by a further $3.8M signed off in January. The funding for the entire project “came from a ‘public safety sales tax’” in K.C. (THE ATHLETIC, 6/9).
MONEY LOST: In K.C., Dylan Lysen noted FIFA reserved “up to 5,000 hotel rooms a night for many of the nights that the organization’s officials and business partners would be in town.” But as the event drew closer, FIFA “canceled the majority of those reservations -- leaving local hotel managers to scramble to fill rooms this summer” that they had hoped were already spoken for. The cancellations likely “means millions of dollars worth of unrealized spending in the metro.” It is “seemingly another example of how the international soccer tournament may not live up to lofty expectations of FIFA or public officials who promised an economic boom for host cities, like Kansas City” (K.C. STAR, 6/8).
