Kansas City Named Copa America Host

Today the host cities for the 2024 Copa America were announced. Seen in a way as a dress rehearsal for the 2026 World Cup in the US, Mexico, and Canada most of the US cities hosting the World Cup are also hosting games in the Copa America. That includes Kansas City which will be hosting two games this coming summer. KC is the one city hosting events that will be using two different facilities to host games, Children’s Mercy Park and GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium.

Along with the hosts, the dates of the games in Kansas City were also announced. The first game KC hosts will be on June 25th at Children’s Mercy Park between two teams in Group A, A2 and A4. The A2 team will be one of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, or Uruguay. The A4 team will be one of Jamaica, Bolivia, Canada/Trinidad and Tobago, or Costa Rica/Honduras. The second game will take place on July 1st at Arrowhead and will feature the United States closing on the group stage. The match will be C1 (the US) against C2, which will be one of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, or Uruguay. More details on who the teams that will be coming to KC will be known later this week when the draw for the group stage takes place on the 7th.

The decision to use to venues for the games in Kansas City makes sense in that the US is likely to pull in a crowd bigger than can be accommodated at Children’s Mercy Park, while the second game seems more likely to fit well at CMP.

The tournament will take place before the renovations at Arrowhead to get the stadium ready for the World Cup take place. Those are supposed to start in the second half of 2024.

The game at Children’s Mercy Park will be the first international match at the stadium since the US women’s national team defeated Nigeria 4-0 in September of 2022. It’ll be the first men’s game there since the US men tied Uruguay 0-0 in June of the same year. This will be the first international games at the stadium to not feature a US team since the Olympic qualifiers for the 2012 Olympics when Canada, El Salvador, Honduras, and Mexico came to KC.

Arrowhead will be hosting it’s first soccer game in nine years as part of the tournament. The last time Arrowhead hosted a soccer game was when it hosted a friendly between Mexico and Paraguay, a 1-0 win for Mexico, in March of 2015. That game had the largest crowd to attend a soccer game in Kansas City that didn’t involve Sporting KC, drawing 38,114 on a Tuesday night. The goal for the US game would presumably better that number and push to try to top the record attendance for a soccer game at the stadium, set when the then KC Wizards defeated Manchester United 2-1 in 2010, drawing 52,424 or even the Missouri soccer record of 54,184 set at The Dome at America’s Center in St. Louis when Real Madrid beat Internazionale 3-0 in 2014.

It looks like the summer of soccer will be happening again in KC this summer.