What are the most popular sports in Kansas City? Well, baseball is a big deal. You can tell by the 20,000 fans that go out to The K every night to watch a team that hasn’t made the playoffs in 25 years. Football is also huge especially when the Chiefs are winning. College basketball is a big deal too when any of the local teams are in town. One sport however that hasn’t been too popular in KC, let alone the US, is soccer.

From 1996-2007 the Kansas City Wizards fan base at Arrowhead Stadium would average just over 11,000 fans per game.  After Arrowhead began stadium renovations, they were forced to move to Community America Ballpark where they averaged about 9,500 fans per game. As soccer has progressed as a more popular sport in America, the Kansas City franchise decided to start all over; new name, new colors, new stadium, new everything.

After renaming the team to Sporting KC and moving to the nicest soccer stadium in America, Livestrong Sporting Park, fans all around Kansas City have truly embraced this team. This season Sporting Kansas City averages 500 more people than LSP even holds with 19,000.

With all of the support around this soccer club how would there be any other result on the field besides success. After a great season last year, where SKC made it all the way to the conference championship game this season is pretty much MLS Cup or bust.

Sporting is currently 16-7-6 on the season and in first place in the east. As the playoff race is beginning to get close, Sporting will really have to show their toughness with multiple games on the road against very solid opponents.

The regular season is coming to a close and no doubt the goal for Sporting Kansas City is to win the MLS Cup Championship, but one thing more important than that is that this team has the support of Kansas City and it doesn’t look like it will be any different in the future. The sports fans in Kansas City just want to root on a winning team and that is what they have in Sporting KC.