How lifelong Philly sports fan Chris Long made Kansas City one of the NWSL’s trendiest teams

WASHINGTON — Growing up in Hazleton, Pa., Kansas City Current do-owner Chris Long made many trips to Philadelphia for Big 5 winter nights at the Palestra and Phillies summer nights at Veterans Stadium. As he learned how to become a sports fan, Long also learned how sports teams build communities among players and in the stands.

“The Big 5, you think about tradition, multigenerational, something that becomes part of the fabric of your community,” Long told The Inquirer. “We want to do that with the women’s side in Kansas City, and we’re seeing it already.”

Long got the opportunity to build such a community from scratch when he brought a NWSL team to Kansas City last year. And in just two seasons, the Current have become a great success.

Besides their performance, the club topped the previous local attendance record for a women’s soccer club three times, with a peak of 10,395 in mid-August — miles beyond the minimal 1,312 who attended the former FC Kansas City’s last game in 2017 before folding that winter.

Now, there’s a new $18 million practice facility in Riverside, Mo., that opened this summer. In 2024, the team will open a $120 million, 11,500-seat stadium of its own — the first stadium built specifically for a NWSL team — on the banks of the Missouri River, just north of Kansas City’s growing downtown.

And on Saturday night, the Current will play in the NWSL championship game (8 p.m., CBS3 and Paramount+), after playoff road wins over No. 4 Houston and No. 1 Seattle.

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The Current‘s other co-owners include his Kansas City-born wife Angie, whom he met at Princeton, and Brittany Mahomes — a public personality in town who’s also Patrick Mahomes’ wife.

They’ve put their money where their mouths are, and nowhere is that more true than the team’s facilities. Plenty of NWSL teams play in nice stadiums, but the Current will be unique in having one that is truly their own.

“We’re in conversations all over the world about bringing players to Kansas City,” Long said. “What do you want to be if you’re a professional athlete? You want to want to get better, and you want to win. And it’s hard to not do that when you don’t have the proper facilities.”

Long values centering players in part because he was one himself, though, not in soccer. He played basketball at Princeton in the mid-1990s, and still recalls duels with St. Joseph’s and La Salle at Convention Hall, and Penn’s dynasty on 33rd Street.

So he knew to focus on something that many NWSL teams used to overlook: having a high-level practice facility. Even now, expansion candidates talk lots about stadiums and fan bases, but not much about practice facilities.

“To not give a proper training environment that the athletes can feel a sense of ownership around is a massive competitive disadvantage,” Long said. “The fact that we can provide players the ability to train, go and hit the weights, do recovery, go to the servery and get your meals, have the lounge after hanging out with your team — literally spend almost the whole day there perfecting their craft — that’s a big advantage. And I think what you’ll see over time is people are going to see that expressed on the field and on the pitch.”

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Indeed, multiple players pointed to the team’s 9-2-4 record since the Current’s facility opened in late June.

“They put everything in there that we need,” said midfielder Kristen Edmonds, a North Jersey-born veteran of three NWSL teams and two European teams. “The only thing we have to worry about is stepping on the field and performing. … Just focusing on being a professional athlete is amazing.”

Goalkeeper AD Franch, a former Thorn with 10 U.S. national team caps, concurred.

“Chris and Angie and Brittany all wanted K.C. to be a place that the players want to come,” said Franch, a Kansas native. “The investment that they’re putting in — and they’ve already put in — is a standard that should already be there. And I think they recognize that, and that’s what they’re trying to help out with.”

It’s also shaped by knowing that FC Kansas City had two ownership groups that went down in scandal. The franchise then became the Utah Royals, which also went down in scandal. So how did Long make the case to the Current’s players that he’ll get things right?

“It’s facilities investments. It’s flying the families of the players in for certain games,” he said. “Making sure to take care of every ounce of medical [work] that a player needs, right in our backyard, and spare no expense. We’re really putting the players at the forefront of everything we do from a decision-making standpoint.”

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Then there are the waves of abuse allegations that have rocked other NWSL teams. When Long meets with fellow team owners, he knows some were named by the Yates investigation as being complicit — especially Portland’s Merritt Paulson and Chicago’s Arnim Whisler.

Long didn’t criticize any other owners directly. But when asked if he favors having more transparency in the league, he didn’t hesitate to say yes.

“It’s been a disturbing period reading these reports,” Long said. “Our mission — it’s clear, it’s everywhere — is to be the best women’s football club in the world.

“We can’t do that without being transparent. Whether that’s sharing information on how we did our facilities, whether that’s sharing best practices around financials, whether it’s workplace safety and ensuring that everyone feels comfortable with going to work every day, we want to be at the leadership level on that, not following.”

Long also pledged that his team will lead the push to keep raising player salaries.

“We are big proponents of continuing to up the level of compensation [and] benefits,” he said. “If you have a player-first mentality, you have to be thinking that direction, because that’s where it’s going. ”

If the Current succeed, they’ll likely have fans well beyond Kansas City cheering them on.

» READ MORE: U.S. Soccer promises action after Yates investigation details abuse and sexual coercion in NWSL