This month marked the sixth anniversary of The Sprint Center. The downtown Kansas City arena opened on Oct. 10, 2007. There were a couple of purposes on why this arena was built: one, to revise downtown Kansas City and two, to get an NBA or NHL team to be the anchor tenant of the arena. The whole plan started back in around 2004 when the city approved the plan and the arena broke ground in 2005.
Since then several troubled franchises in both leagues flirted with the city for relocation only to either get new ownership or a new arena in their own respective city.
The Pittsburgh Penguins of the NHL were one of the main examples. They were trying to get a new arena in their city and were ready to move if they didn’t get a deal done at the last hour. Kansas City offered the Penguins free rent in order to get them to move until Pittsburgh got a new arena deal at the last minute of the deadline.
Throughout the six years, the arena has been open it has enjoyed the success of hosting concerts, college basketball and a variety of other events. It has also enjoyed recognition with awards of being one of the top arenas in the U.S. and one of the busiest arenas. But one of the main points at the time before the arena opened was that if we built this, we would get a team.
I think the business leaders, Mayor Sly James and AEG feel that it isn’t necessary to get a team because they feel the diversity of the average 140 events a year is a better fit for them than competing with the Royals, Chiefs and Sporting KC for the fans’ money and season tickets.
I don’t see how they can worry about losing so many of those events if they had one team? The arena hosts 140 events a year out of 365 days a year. Both leagues play 41 home games for each team and some additional games depending on playoffs.
If Sprint Center had a team they could still have those 140 events and 41 home games of an NBA or NHL team, plus any additional games depending on playoffs, they would both have work around each other schedules but in the long run they can make double the money for the arena, parking garages, hotels, Power & Light District and the other downtown restaurants and bars.
Now the other issue about getting a team to come here is ownership. In order for a team to work they would most likely need local ownership like Sporting KC as opposed to out of town ownership like the Chiefs and Royals. They also need owners that see whichever sport they get as a passion investment, rather than just an ordinary investment, making it only about the money.
Now judging from the current situations of both leagues and from talking to other fellow Kansas City sports fans, I think an NHL team would work.
One, a lot of KC sports fans tend to watch more college basketball than the NBA and all of the NBA teams have secure ownership groups and up to date arenas.
Two, the NHL has more teams up for grabs and with recent conference realignment that has 16 teams on the east and 14 teams on the west, it sets up to where they can get two expansion teams for western city markets to make both conferences evenly balanced.
Three, an NHL team would tie into Sprint Center’s diversity by having 41 NHL home games, concerts, family shows, college basketball and the other miscellaneous events to maintain the Sprint Center’s event diversity.
Now, I will admit I’m glad that the arena is doing well without it at the moment but I think a team is still needed because it’s a missing ingredient.
But in the meantime all we can do is enjoy events the arena has to offer and get the occasional fix of NBA and NHL through preseason games.
