FEA TURE — LIVESTRONG SPOR TING
P ARK
START
through Sporting Club’s partnership with LIVESTRONGSTRONG. A portion of all revenue generated at the stadium goes to support the Lance Armstrong Foundation's fight against cancer in a first-of-its-kind naming rights partner- ship. Our innovative six-year deal will see at least US$7.5m go to the Foundation.”
This philanthropic partnership was a leading consid-
eration in The StadiumBusiness Awards honouring LIVESTRONG Sporting Park with their Community Award.
Ownership Group’s Vision Sporting Kansas City is proud to be the only professional sports organisation in Kansas City with local ownership. The ownership group’s five leaders in the business com- munity include Neal Patterson, Chairman, CEO and co- founder of Cerner Corporation; Cliff Illig, Vice Chairman and co-founder of Cerner Corporation; Robb Heineman, CEO of Sporting Club; Greg Maday, Chairman and CEO of Spec- Chem, LLC., and co-founder of Rock Island Capital, LLC.; and Pat Curran, founder and principal of C3 Capital, LLC. On the vision behind the new stadium, Heineman
said: “Basically, we wanted the stadium to display the ‘beautiful game’ — the descriptor of soccer worldwide — to our American fans in a way that they haven’t seen before. We wanted to define the authentic American soc- cer experience. For us, that was a roof that would retain sound, seating that was very steep, and close to the field,
and then blend in American crowd amenities, having premium-seating areas at non-premium prices. I think it’s going to be an ongoing evolution to try to really nail the event experience for our fans. When we designed the stadium, we wanted to start with the experience, so we’ve gone to great lengths to break the stadium into a number of different mini-venues, which all have experi- ence scripts running through them. For us to really implement those scripts and streamline the experience it will probably take some time, but we’re committed to making sure the experience is the best it can be.
“After our initial negotiations for a Kansas City, Mis-
souri, site, financial support from the city and state fell through, and we began talking with Kansas City, Kansas, and the state of Kansas, with the final public financing process remarkably speedy. From our first contact with the city and state, at the very end it was about ten months with an all-hands-on-deck effort. We presented our thoughts on the economic impact on the area and the government provided the different tools to let the financing happen. Then we were able to create a US$200m-plus stadium, with around US$150m dollars coming from public financing.”
New Revenue Opportunities Greg Cotton, Sporting Club COO, added: “When we took over the club in 2006, we had about 600 season ticket holders, the lowest in Major League Soccer. We were last
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Supporters line up to enter LIVESTRONG Sporting Park,
averaging 19,000-plus capacity crowds this
season. IMAGE: GARY ROHMAN
20 th AN N I V ER S AR Y
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