"To have games in his favorite place on earth, Arrowhead Stadium, will be very, very meaningful for me and my family." Clark Hunt said that quietly, and it lands with weight. Because the man who spent decades trying to bring the World Cup to Kansas City — his father, Lamar Hunt — won't be there to see it.
Kansas City is set to host six matches at the 2026 FIFA World Cup, including a quarterfinal. It's the smallest market among the 16 host cities. And it almost happened in 1994, when Lamar personally pitched FIFA officials at Arrowhead. They passed. Three decades later, his son finished the job.
The man behind American soccer
Lamar Hunt's fingerprints are on the entire structure of the American game. He co-founded the United Soccer Association in 1967. He was one of the original investors in Major League Soccer, which emerged partly because FIFA demanded a top-tier professional league as a condition of awarding the US the 1994 World Cup. The national championship trophy carries his name — the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup. He's in the National Soccer Hall of Fame.
Clark described his father as perhaps the "single most important figure in the development of soccer in the United States." That's a son talking, yes — but it's also difficult to argue with the record.
Clark's own relationship with the sport runs deep. He played soccer at Southern Methodist University, a nationally ranked Division I program, and has attended 12 of the last 13 World Cups. His earliest memories of the game trace back to travelling with Lamar as a child — including the 1974 tournament in Germany, where his father pulled him into a pickup kickaround in the street and showed him what pure love for a sport actually looks like.
What this means for Kansas City
The projected economic impact tops $600 million. Hunt believes hosting the tournament could permanently shift how the world sees Kansas City — a city with two professional soccer clubs in Sporting Kansas City and Kansas City Current, both with serious training infrastructure, which ultimately helped persuade FIFA to overlook the market size.
From a betting perspective, quarterfinal-stage matches draw some of the tournament's highest handle — Kansas City isn't just getting group stage filler. These are games that will matter.
"Yeah, 100 percent I'll stand up there with my siblings, and we'll talk a lot about my dad... how much he would have been thrilled to know that Kansas City finally got a World Cup."
Lamar Hunt tried to make this happen in 1994. His son is the reason it's happening in 2026. The old man would have loved every second of it.
