When Angie and Chris Long first decided to build a stadium for their National Women’s Soccer League team, the Kansas City Current, they didn’t exactly have a model to look to—every other franchise in the NWSL shared its home field with one or more men’s clubs. So the new team owners took their inspiration from intimate venues like Duke University’s Cameron Indoor Stadium, settling on a capacity of 11,500 with the goal of creating a fan experience that was loud, crowded and coveted.
By the time CPKC Stadium opened in March 2024, Kansas City had fallen in love with soccer, and the NWSL was beginning to take off. The Current became the first team in league history to sell out all of its home matches that year and now have a season-ticket base of around 8,000—more than four of the league’s 16 clubs are averaging in total attendance this year.
The downside of that success: Many fans haven’t been able to get in the door. As robust as the army of season-ticket holders is, there are still more than 5,000 names on the waiting list, and the number crunch leaves only a couple of thousand seats available for single-game sales. Meanwhile, the stadium’s 12 luxury suites—all of which require long-term commitments—sold out in about two weeks.
“Sometimes scarcity is a really, really good thing, but sometimes it puts people off, too,” says Chris Long, who in addition to owning the Current serves as chairman and CEO of Palmer Square Capital Management, the investment firm he cofounded with his wife that has more than $36 billion in assets under management and is based just across the Kansas border in Mission Woods. “We want to get more people in the tent.”
So barely two years after the stadium opened, the Current are ready to expand it. On Tuesday, the team is unveiling its plans to increase the capacity to 18,000, after Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas proposed a tax increment financing (TIF) district and up to $235 million in bonds to help finance the renovation and the surrounding development earlier this month.
The expansion project at CPKC Stadium, shown in a rendering, will fill in the space that currently exists in the corners between grandstands.
Kansas City Current and Gensler
The Current like to boast that no seat at CPKC Stadium is more than 110 feet from the field, and they are aiming to maintain that kind of proximity with the new design. Rather than building a new upper deck, the team intends to add the bulk of the 6,500 additional seats in the corners between the grandstands that currently flank the pitch and raise the roof line to add more premium boxes along the top of the stadium, roughly doubling the suite capacity. The project would also connect the second-level concourse between the east and west sections while preserving a view of the Christopher S. Bond Bridge, which crosses the Missouri River just outside the building.
The team expects to complete the vast majority of the construction outside the NWSL season, likely beginning in the fall of 2027 in hopes of finishing in time for the 2031 FIFA Women’s World Cup, which is set to be hosted by the United States along with Costa Rica, Jamaica and Mexico.
Public support for the project would be a shift for the Longs and their co-owners, Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes and his wife, Brittany. The group privately financed the original $140 million stadium—with $5.5 million in tax credits from the Missouri Development Finance Board toward infrastructure improvements in the area—and says it has invested a total of $350 million to date in the development, including the surrounding 23-acre mixed-use district. The full project is now expected to cost $1.4 billion and will feature public trails and park space, apartments, restaurants and shops, in addition to the stadium.
The mayor’s proposal would not raise tax rates; instead, a portion of existing tax revenue in the area would be diverted to the project. The plan is being presented to a committee on Tuesday, and the City Council is expected to vote on the measure on Thursday. If it is approved, Kansas City would apply for incentives through the Missouri Downtown Economic Stimulus Act, or MODESA, a state program that is designed to help bring activity back to downtowns and was used in the revitalization of the city’s Power & Light District.
The issue of public funding for sports venues has been hotly debated around the country in recent years. In Kansas City, MLB’s Royals announced a plan in April to build a new $1.9 billion ballpark downtown with $600 million in city funding and millions more from the state. The NFL’s Chiefs, meanwhile, are set to leave Arrowhead Stadium in Missouri for Kansas City, Kansas, where they are building a $3 billion stadium with $1.8 billion from state bonds.
“There are some questions that people typically have as to why we are in the sports and entertainment business at all, and I get that,” Mayor Lucas says, but “long term, cities have to have stuff.” With less dense neighborhoods leading to population declines and the office market slumping, someone has to pay for that “stuff” and help reignite cities’ growth.
Lucas acknowledges that economic studies have often cast doubt on the benefits of publicly funded sports stadiums but has his own issues with the way that many of the analyses have been conducted.
“This is good for Kansas City,” Lucas says of the Current development, noting that the World Cup games being played this summer at Arrowhead Stadium are demonstrating the power of sports by bringing the city global recognition and attracting visitors from overseas. “It’s building up a whole new neighborhood.”
Mukul Sharma, a partner at Palmer Square’s real estate vertical, says the Current’s project would improve the neighborhood’s infrastructure, with new parking, roads, utilities and stormwater detention, and Jon Stephens, president and CEO of Port KC, which oversees development along the riverfront and owns the land where the stadium sits, says the project is rejuvenating a historic area of downtown Kansas City that had become a city tow lot and literal dumping ground.
The stadium and the surrounding development along the Missouri River, shown in a rendering, are helping revitalize a historic area of Kansas City that in 1979 became a literal dumping ground.
Kansas City Current and Gensler
In 1979, the roof collapsed at Kemper Arena—the home of Kansas City’s NBA team at the time, the Kings—and “Kansas City thought so little of its connection to the Missouri River at the time that the roof debris was dumped on the site of the current CPKC Stadium,” Stephens says.
“To date,” Stephens adds of the new development, “the risk has been borne almost entirely by Chris and Angie and the private side, so as we look to take this to the next level, doing it in a way where the community is supporting it I think is the right thing. We want to see this project reach its full potential and its full build-out so that Kansas Citians can start reaping the full benefits sooner rather than later.”
Even in its existing form, CPKC Stadium has been a game-changer for the Current.
After the Longs secured an NWSL expansion slot and the rights to the then-Utah Royals’ players for a reported $3 million to found the club, revenue was a paltry $3 million for the Current’s first season in 2021. But the new stadium—billed as the first in the world to be developed primarily for a pro women’s sports team—drove up ticket prices and allowed the club to tap into new business lines, including concessions, naming rights and third-party events. Revenue hit $36 million in 2024 and rose to $38 million in 2025, tied with Los Angeles’ Angel City FC for the best mark in the league, according to Forbes estimates, even though Kansas City is the NWSL’s second-smallest market, as defined by Nielsen. The Current also believe they could reach break-even on an operating basis this year, in what NWSL insiders say would be a league first.
At the same time, NWSL team values have exploded. Forbes valued the Current at $325 million in April, No. 2 in the league behind $340 million Angel City FC—figures that don’t include the value of real estate such as CPKC Stadium or the $18 million training facility the Current opened in 2022. Setting aside two expansion clubs that began play this year, Denver Summit FC and Boston Legacy FC, NWSL franchises are now worth $200 million on average, a number that is up 49% from 2025 and remains on an upward trajectory, with Denver and Boston expected to join the league leaders as they build or renovate stadiums of their own.
A new plaza outside CPKC Stadium, shown in a rendering, could host fan events or a second stage at festivals.
Kansas City Current and Gensler
“[Our stadium] definitely was a first on many fronts, but now it’s proof of concept, and to continue to lead requires more investment and raising the bar again,” Long says.
The Current’s leadership declined to provide specifics on how the stadium expansion would impact the team’s revenue projections, noting that there is still much to determine, but the extra room would allow for more single-game ticket sales, which tend to carry higher prices than season tickets on a per-match basis. The increase in premium seating, from roughly 1,300 seats currently, would also help the team capitalize on an increasingly important slice of sports teams’ revenue pie, with the Current planning to introduce a new higher-end communal club space and reconfiguring some of their “loge boxes”—semiprivate groups of a handful of seats, smaller than traditional suites, that have become popular across the sports world.
“We don’t have enough even [standing-room-only] group space right now,” says Sharma, the Palmer Square partner. “All of our group spaces are completely booked for every single match.”
The Current are particularly excited about what the expansion could mean for their ability to host other sorts of events. CPKC Stadium held a U.S. women’s national soccer team friendly in October but needed special approval because it didn’t meet the team’s usual capacity requirement. An increase to 18,000 seats would put the venue on par with many MLS stadiums, Sharma notes, and a new parking garage would help accommodate the rise in traffic.
The full development, which is opening 429 multifamily residential units and 50,000 square feet of retail space this year as it wraps up the first phase of construction, offers more options for higher-profile events. The Current anticipate their grounds being part of Kansas City’s bid package for hosting the 2031 Women’s World Cup, and while the team has not embraced concerts to date because of the damage one can do to the pitch, it believes the site could be enticing for a top artist or festival, with room for additional stages in a new plaza next to the stadium and at a small amphitheater in a park across the street that opens this summer.
The development, shown in a rendering next to Kansas City’s Christopher S. Bond Bridge, covers 35 acres, including CPKC Stadium and neighboring residential and retail space.
Kansas City Current and Gensler
“I’m not saying it’s like Lollapalooza in Grant Park in Chicago,” Sharma says, “but we can create a program across our 35-acre campus that no one else in our city, really no one else in our region can activate.”
Long says he is “absolutely leaving the door open for more expansion” at the stadium, adding that “it wouldn’t be challenging to go vertical with what we’re doing, should that opportunity present itself.” For now, though, he and his partners are plenty excited about the opportunity in front of them.
“I distinctly remember Angie saying women’s professional sports are not a charity—they matter, and they are something big,” says Port KC’s Stephens. “They’re putting literal foundations in the ground to prove that the NWSL is a major sport that’s here to stay, and they want to set a global standard.”