This place is going crazy.

The world showed up in Kansas City the summer of 2026.

The FIFA World Cup brought six matches, four base camps and fans from around the globe, a stadium that shook with every national anthem sung.

Throughout the tournament, every camera on Earth pointed here.

But 60 years ago, Kansas City wasn't even on the map.

60 years ago, this city was fighting just to keep its own teams from leaving.

At the time we met the Sports Commission, they were operating in the closet of Lumbermen's Insurance, and they had no employees.

Yes, a closet.

That's not a metaphor.

That's where the Kansas City Sports Commission started.

No staff, no budget.

Just a handful of people who believed this city deserved better than what it had.

Come on.

60 years, numerous championships and a World Cup later, here's how they got from there to here.

January 1966.

Kansas City has a football team.

But concerns were bubbling.

They may not stay.

Back in the early days, my dad was fighting to keep the Chiefs here.

A group of local businessmen.

No press conference, no funding, no plan beyond stubbornness, formed the organization called the Kansas City Sports Commission.

The Kansas City Sports Commission was really founded to help keep the Chiefs in Kansas City.

Their entire job at first is simple: sell tickets.

They had to prove the city wanted their teams badly enough to keep them.

It's not lost on me that the Sports Commission started in January 1966, and the first chairman of the Sports Commission was Ernie Mehl.

He'd been the sports editor of the Kansas City Star.

He left that position to become chairman of the Kansas City Sports Commission.

I've got a brochure, actually, the first brochure that the Sports Commission printed, because they knew that it needed to be proactive when it came to raising funds and awareness for the professional teams in Kansas City.

A group of gentlemen got together and really wanted to focus on keeping the Kansas City Chiefs in Kansas City.

And how do you do that?

You sell tickets and you prove that you want a team here.

You prove to the community that we need this team here.

That grew into selling tickets out of the trunks of their cars, to forming this organization, to creating bylaws, to create a board of directors.

Almost immediately, the Sports Commission's Ernie Mehl would prove vital in convincing Jackson County voters on a revolutionary idea to build not one shared stadium, but two, each built for a single sport.

Lamar Hunt and Ewing Kauffman were the ones that established the precedent that sports were best played in stadiums that were built for the sport.

And they built the Truman Sports Complex together.

At the time when most everything was going into multi-purpose stadiums: Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, St.

Louis, we remember them all.

They argued that it needed to be different, and they made it differently.

Interesting, just as an aside, that it ended up spinning off the fact that Kansas City is now the epicenter of sports architecture in the world.

That's really the origin of the Truman Sports Complex.

The first idea was to create a domed stadium in downtown Kansas City, but quickly they moved on to the idea of separate stadiums and the Truman Sports Complex.

By the 1980s, the Chiefs and the Royals were established.

But established isn't the same as secure.

The commission's job was shifting: not just keeping teams here, but proving Kansas City could be a sports destination for something big, in addition to its hometown teams.

In the '80s, what the Sports Commission has become, you know, it needed civic leadership, it needed commitment and needed money.

And the man carrying the day-to-day weight of it for years was almost entirely on his own: Kevin Gray.

By multiple accounts, he was the Sports Commission when he was hired in 1989.

Kevin worked for the Royals, and like, "Hey, you know, that really fun guy, that very energetic guy that can talk to anybody and always has an idea.

That's our guy."

We're going to do everything we can to continue to rally the public and private sectors to take a look of those issues, and we don't want to see any more things leave.

A handful of committed people, a closet with no employees, a city with two teams and no guarantee either would stay.

That's the whole beginning.

Everything else, the stadiums, the championships, the World Cup, gets built from this foundation, one decade at a time.

By the late '90s, Kemper Arena was aging, downtown was struggling, and that had consequences Kansas City couldn't ignore.

There was a time in the late 1990s, early 2000s, when we just weren't exactly sure what Kansas City was as a sports town.

Kansas City was losing sports entities.

The NCAA up and left, you know, to go to Indianapolis.

Big 12 went from Kansas City to Dallas.

The National High School Federation left Kansas City and went to Indianapolis.

We were losing events.

There was a period of time where, what is our purpose?

What do we need to be working on?

And on top of that, how do we find staff to do what we want to do?

So there was a gap a little bit there of, how do we fix what is broken, and what are we focused on?

But then as you really look at the strategic plan back then and start to see, they're not just focused on NCAA, they're focused on other groups, other amateur groups, and of course our professional teams.

And back then it was just the Royals and the Chiefs.

But then what else are they doing?

And supporting UMKC Athletics and keeping the NABC, the National Association of Basketball Coaches, in Kansas City, the Soccer Coaches Association in Kansas City.

I do think the right people were around the table.

People like a Jack Kilroy and others that got to work and said, how do we continue to grow sports in our city?

And there had to be an energy behind it.

And the Sports Commission leaned into that, became the energy.

The Big 12 was saying, you need to upgrade Kemper Arena.

Kemper had passed its time.

It just was not the building to punch above our weight class.

What Kansas City did was kind of put a Band-Aid on it.

They expanded the seating, remember, now, the glass facade, and cost about $25 million or something.

And that wasn't enough.

Big 12 wanted more.

Before I became mayor in 2011, I had a photograph of a parking lot downtown with a chair on it.

And that chair sits where the Sprint Center is now.

When you look at that photograph and you look at the entirety of it, all you saw were old buildings that weren't functioning well, stains on parking lots and rusted metal rope.

Barnes changed all of that by getting Power & Light District and the Sprint Center built.

Most Kansas City voters approved two.

new taxes to pay for a new downtown arena.

Just this is our moment.

And that's why today's election was so important.

We turned a corner today.

Well, in my time with the Sports Commission, when I started, you know, in 2000, Kevin Gray was really instrumental in bringing together three architect companies to come to an agreement, along with the city and Mayor Barnes, of creating, at the time, Sprint Center, which is now T-Mobile.

I think that started the ball rolling.

It started downtown getting developed.

It started apartments and entertainment coming into downtown, which at that time was pretty dead in 2000.

So I think these were early signs that, you know, we had something special that was going to be built on.

There was a time in the '80s when you could roll up the carpets at 6 or 7:00 at night, downtown Kansas City.

Now downtown is vibrant, exciting, not just about sports, but about this community and the pride that we all have in Kansas City because of it.

Well, certainly the arena is really a very important part, a foundational part of what many of us knew needed to happen in our downtown.

You don't stop and say, okay, we've got everything the way we want it.

You just have to keep going.

Year after year after year, building on those foundational pieces.

With a rebuilt downtown and a new arena, Kansas City proved to be the perfect host for the premier college basketball conference tournament.

The Sports Commission then established Kansas City as the epicenter for college basketball each March.

For us to keep the Big 12 tournament, Sprint Center had to happen.

And it did.

And now it's anchored here, and I can't imagine it, and I think people that attend it can't imagine it existing, or at least succeeding, anywhere else.

I take great pride and have always taken great pride in telling people who don't know anything about Kansas City that we have more college basketball games in this city than any other city in the entire country.

A steady, reliable partner, we always knew what we could expect.

I don't think I've ever encountered a sports commission that was better prepared, or a leadership team that was more engaged, and that was held in high esteem from the standpoint of people being certain that what you say you'll do, you'll do in Kansas City.

KC Sports Commission is world class.

You guys make us feel special.

And that's critically important.

Because there's a lot of places that don't have that flavor of hospitality.

And from the time we arrive in the community, we know we need something.

We're in love with Kansas City, and as long as I'm commissioner, we'll be returning to KC year in and year out.

The Sports Commission also became known for its advocacy of women's sports.

The organization was building something very special.

In the late '80s, a failed bid to relocate the Women's Sports Foundation to Kansas City led to a different question: why not build our own?

We lost that bid to be the home for the Women's Sports Foundation, which in turn turned into a lot of us, myself included, saying, why don't we do our own thing?

And we created the Women's Intersport Network, WIN for KC.

WIN for KC became one of the Sports Commission's longest-running successes.

Decades before women's sports became a national story, Kansas City was already investing in it.

WIN for KC really established sort of that mindset that Kansas City is going to be a place where women are honored for their athleticism, for their commitment, and then tying that involvement in sports ultimately to leadership and civic leadership and corporate leadership.

What I love most about WIN for KC, to show young girls and to empower young girls and women what it means to be strong and to be a force, even if you aren't playing on the pitch or the ice or the court, there is a place for you as it relates to leadership.

There's a place for you as it relates to working at sports.

A rebuilt downtown, a new arena, a basketball tournament, a women's sports movement decades ahead of its time.

None of it happened by accident, and none of it happened fast.

It happened the way everything in this story happens: one relationship, one bid, one long shot at a time.

Kansas City already had a Major League Soccer team, the Kansas City Wizards.

But if KC had not become a soccer hotbed, the Sports Commission's bid to bring the World Cup to Kansas City likely would not have succeeded.

Lamar Hunt's passion was to grow the sport nationally.

But it would take new ownership to build Kansas City's soccer identity.

Cliff Illig and his partner Neal Patterson were the right people to carry the Wizards forward.

They did an amazing job of rebranding the team as Sporting Kansas City, building a soccer-specific stadium and helping turn Kansas City into one of the soccer capitals of the United States.

Days after Sporting Park opened, Kevin Gray passed away after a courageous battle with cancer.

Kathy Nelson, then director of WIN for KC, was named president and CEO of the Sports Commission.

Under her watch, the commission reached new heights and in 2020 helped launch a second pro soccer team in KC, the Kansas City Current.

What I see, Kansas City sports fans show up for a women's sports team that has only been in existence for 5 or 6 years, endeavoring upon this amazing feat of opening up the first purpose-built stadium in the world here in Kansas City.

The amount of pride that happens in the city, it's unlike anything I've ever seen.

I can't say.

That pride wasn't limited to one team or one sport.

Our teams have given us lots to celebrate recently.

Sporting: 2013 MLS Cup.

The Royals: back-to-back World Series runs.

David Glass, the owner, Dayton Moore, the president, the general manager.

And from.

Super Bowl championships for the Chiefs.

The Sports Commission was at the heart of Kansas City's incredible run of professional sports championships.

Heartland.

Jackpot.

Kansas City.

The Sports Commission owns and operates 15 annual fundraising events, including the Garmin Kansas City Marathon and the WIN for KC Women's Sports Awards.

Over the years, the organization has also served as a consultant to our local professional teams on their stadium projects.

This included working with John Sherman and the Royals to fulfill Ewing Kauffman's promise, made decades earlier, to keep Major League Baseball in Kansas City He did a lot to keep the team here.

We talked about him bringing the team here, but what he did, from my perspective, that was more impactful was really keep it here when he couldn't find a local buyer.

And when I got that call from David Glass in 2019, I felt like that was a call from Ewing Kauffman.

I take that obligation to Mr.

Kauffman's legacy, and I take that very seriously.

Make no mistake, we weren't going anywhere.

They'd have to run me out of town.

Kansas City sports championships fueled the city's confidence.

When it was time for the next challenge, the Sports Commission used that momentum and led the bid for the biggest sporting event in the world, the FIFA World Cup.

Kansas City was the smallest market in the running, betting everything it had built for 60 years.

Keep in mind that the ten US cities that are World Cup host cities are all top 15 population centers in this country.

Kansas City is 31st and, by some lists, 33rd.

I knew Kansas City had a unique combination of assets that would be attractive to FIFA.

That included a world-class soccer infrastructure, one of the best stadiums in the world in Arrowhead Stadium, and a community that could really work together to pull off a big event like the World Cup.

When it got down to the end, we were competing against cities like Denver and Nashville and Cincinnati and Orlando and Washington, DC.

This World Cup is the first World Cup in history where the host country capital is not hosting games.

I just don't think there was any question in FIFA's mind that we wanted it more than anybody else.

The Sports Commission is hoping to win one of the top prizes, a chance to host some 2026 World Cup matches.

The World Cup is coming to Kansas City, baby.

Oh my goodness.

I truly believe it was the fans that pulled the World Cup to Kansas City.

We just provided the context to showcase their emotion and their energy.

Four base camps.

Six matches in the smallest US market to ever host a World Cup.

Kansas City, who once wondered if their team would leave, found themselves at the heart of the world's largest sporting event.

I think we've done a very good job of establishing on the world stage that Kansas City is a soccer destination worthy of the world's attention.

When you talk about Kansas City as a town that's big enough and progressive enough to attract a World Cup and NFL Draft, to me, it starts with how appealing Kansas City has been to the NCAA and the events that have come here.

Wrestling, a couple of volleyball championships here in town.

Division II championships here.

That includes soccer.

A lot of major sports championships have come to Kansas City.

The city that had the most Final Fours and the most NCAA tournament games, and knows what it's doing as a sports destination.

Did all of that cause Kansas City to be the center of the universe?

In many ways, yes, it did.

The Sports Commission and people involved in this community that had the Joe McGuff kind of heart and vision and passion, that was also part of it.

Kansas City has always been a regional market.

There has to be this 360-degree impact regionally, but the Sports Commission thinks that way.

They think beyond geographic lines.

They think beyond municipalities.

And to make it all one big group.

The ingenuity, the ability to make things happen once there's an event and to do it well.

And then tying in the entire region is part of the incredible scope and performance of the Sports Commission.

My dad had a close association with the Kansas City Sports Commission and was always very proud of their work.

That's continued for our family over the last 20 years.

It's been a real pleasure to get to work with them on bringing big sporting events to Kansas City.

I think not only are we a winning city and a great host city, but we're a city of firsts.

When you think about the Kansas City Royals being the first expansion Major League Baseball team to win a World Series, the KC Current building the first purpose-built stadium for women's sports, the Chiefs playing in the first Super Bowl and actually Clark and Lamar Hunt and Norma Hunt creating the term Super Bowl because of the Hunt family.

We're a city of firsts.

We're a city of legacy.

We're a city of heroes and champions all through sports.

I think our sports history here is our legacy, and it just makes me super proud every day to go to work, to think that we have played a role in what our city looks like.

It started in a closet with no employees.

60 years later, the whole world is watching.

This story ain't over.

As Kevin Gray would say, onward and upward, Kansas City.

Kansas City Sports Commission, and thank you for everything you do for us.

Congratulations on the 60th year.

We'll see you soon.

Congratulations, Kansas City Sports Commission, on 60 years.

Here's to 60 more.

Love everything you've been doing in the community, in sports.

And just want to say, keep giving my teammates awards.

Just wanted to give you guys a special shout out.

And once again, congratulations on 60 great years.

Commission for 60 years.

I just wanted to say congratulations on 60 years.

I can't wait to go to your events that have been really great every year, and wishing for more, many, many more.

KC Sports Commission.

Congrats on 60 years!

I've enjoyed being a part of your events like the Kansas City Sports Awards in the past, and I'm thankful for everything you've done to make Kansas City better through sports.