How the Kansas City Current Are Driving Big-Time Ticket Sales at the Country’s First Women’s-Specific Sports Stadium

Less than three years removed from their inception, the Kansas City Current have already become a landmark organization in American sports. Why? They’re doing something no one has done before: building the first ever stadium expressly constructed to host a women’s professional sports team.

Kansas City has long roots in women’s soccer. It was one of eight founding cities for the NWSL in 2013 with FC Kansas City, who would go on to play for four seasons, winning two NWSL Championships along the way. In 2020, the NWSL announced a return to the Soccer Capital of America with an expansion franchise led by Angie Long, Chris Long and Brittany Mahomes (her husband, Patrick, would later join her in the venture). Thus the resurrected Kansas City Current were born, ushering in with them a resolute commitment to championing women’s sports in the Paris of the Plains.

In October 2021, the club made good on that promise by announcing construction on a new stadium, with expectations to complete it in time for the 2024 season. It was an announcement that generated a ton of press and local buzz, and the Current’s sales and marketing teams were ready to translate all those eyeballs into matchgoing fans.

One of the first things they did was build out a website dedicated to the new stadium. As VP of Sales and Service Dan Boyd tells FEVO, that stadium page was designed “to separate the story of KC Current Stadium from the day-to-day Kansas City Current team page, because if you overlap those two into one singular source, we felt like there would be competing narratives.”

This dedicated site intimately tells the story behind the stadium to build excitement among fans. It shares up-to-the-date details around design and construction, giving curious fans a place to return to time and again to track the stadium’s progress. Essentially, the Current have created a channel where fans can log their interest and feel like they are part of the project, compounding their loyalty to the club in the process. On a more tactical level, the site also allows the Current’s business team “to point people in different directions depending on the marketing tactic being used,” says Boyd.

With all the extra attention the stadium has brought to the franchise, the Current saw an opportunity to build for the future without sacrificing present-day growth. One of the first things Boyd and his team did after the groundbreaking of the new stadium was use FEVO to set up a 2024 New Stadium Deposit Campaign that lived directly on the new stadium site.

According to Boyd, this allowed the Current to achieve two very important objectives: First and foremost, it drove commitments for the 2024 season in big numbers. Second, it gave the team a robust lead list for upsells heading into the 2023 season. Season-ticket holders get priority seat selection for upcoming seasons, so the promise of great seats in the new stadium helped entice fans to obtain or upgrade their tickets for the current season. Via this plan, the Current were able to identify the scale of interest of all their new fans, from base-level supporters all the way up to suite purchasers. “That hand-raising exercise gave us some good indication,” says Boyd, “and through a monetary commitment from our prospects, [we were able to] really identify or kick off the conversation with targeted seating experiences.”

We’re on a journey. New stadium. New identity. Come be a part of it with us.

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With the information the Current collected through their FEVO deposit page, account executives were able to cater sales efforts toward individual fans’ interests, budgets and commitment levels, ultimately selling through packages that suited each buyer. Between this and the promise of priority seating selection in 2024, the Current were able to double their year-over-year season ticket commitments in 2023. On top of that, thanks to the information gathered by selling with FEVO, the accounts team was able to put together special packages for clients who weren’t ready to commit to season tickets but still wanted partial packages or single-game tickets.

“Being able to put all those puzzle pieces together through various marketing initiatives and narratives has really completed the picture for us,” says Boyd. “It has given us this really cool duality of focusing on the now, generating the buzz and capitalizing on it through these revenue streams while also inspiring people for what's coming next.”

With all the data they collected, the Current were able to be incredibly savvy with their marketing and advertising. The promise of a new stadium has presented Boyd’s team not just with an opportunity to sell tickets, but a narrative that will resonate with fans for years to come: “We’re on a journey. New stadium. New identity. Come be a part of it with us.”