When Kansas City officials talk about punching above their weight class as a sports market, rankings like the one issued Monday by the Sports Business Journal support the claim.
In the publiction’s fourth annual Best Sports Business Cities rankings, Kansas City placed ninth out of 50 for 2026.
The rankings were based on a combination of some 540,000 data points collected by SBJ’s editorial research team, as well as input from more than 120 sports business executives.
Kansas City’s profile not only included hosting six games and four base camps in the FIFA World Cup (Shop Fan Gear) this summer, but the more than $600 million invested into city/regional soccer facilities — including CPKC Stadium, the world’s first women’s professional sports venue.
Noted, too, as being in KC’s favor were T-Mobile Center’s history of playing host to the annual Big 12 hoops tournaments and such coming attractions as the Chiefs (Shop Chiefs Fan Gear)’ new stadium in Kansas City, Kansas and the Royals (Shop Royals Fan Gear)’ forthcoming downtown ballpark.
The Kansas City Sports Commission and Foundation was also recently recognized as the nation’s top sports commission for markets with populations of more than 500,000 — and that was another factor in KC’s corner.
The Sports Business Journal ranked Kansas City as the sixth-best soccer market in 2025.
Best Sports Business Cities for 2026
Atlanta
New York City
Indianapolis
Charlotte
Minneapolis-St. Paul
Los Angeles
Las Vegas
Phoenix
Kansas City
Miami