It took four years for Kansas City to get ready for this. The flags were put up. The stadium’s name was changed for a short time. City officials held press conferences to talk about security rules, the fan experience, and how to get things done. Still, when it came time for the big game between Argentina and Algeria, with the defending champions playing and fans from around the world watching, it was something much more ordinary—traffic—that came the closest to bringing it all down.
Mayor Quinton Lucas had already warned people about this. In November, he was very honest for a city official right before a big event. He told KSHB 41 that crime and crowd control weren’t what kept him up at night. The way there was public transport. The way he said it, “I know traffic can be tough,” made it sound like he had been stuck in that I-70 backup a million times and knew exactly how it felt. It was a good thing that the mayor was honest, which doesn’t happen very often.
Kansas City’s first World Cup game was on Tuesday, and for many fans, the experience began and ended with waiting. There are long lines at the gates. On I-70, cars were backed up for miles. Shuttle buses that didn’t move at all. There were fans who walked miles to get to their seats after giving up the transportation they had paid for. Michael Dixon intentionally came to Kansas City for this match. He is an experienced World Cup traveler who has been to tournaments in Brazil and Qatar. He bought a ConnectKC26 park-and-ride ticket for 5:30 p.m., which said the bus would leave from Graceway Church, which was about three miles away. He finally got on a bus with his family around 7 p.m., and they got to their seats around 7:30. The events outside that they had hoped to enjoy were long over.
“There wasn’t a clear control of who was going where,” Dixon stated. No matter how simple it is, that sentence probably says more about what happened than any official statement has.
Gordon Wilson was an Uber driver who came to work hoping to make a lot of money on Kansas City’s biggest sports day in years. He made two trips. Two. He usually makes about $200 a day, so he thought that a World Cup game would make that amount double. It wasn’t even close. He is now thinking about whether it is even worth it to drive to future games. That’s the kind of quiet, practical effect that doesn’t get talked about in official press releases: the supply of rideshares dried up because it stopped making sense for the drivers to do the work.
The local organizing committee for KC2026 admitted the delays in a statement, saying that the crowds were caused by “operational constraints” at the stadium entrance. When asked who was to blame, they said FIFA because decisions about entry gates “primarily rest” with the international body. As of this writing, FIFA hadn’t responded to questions from the press. It’s still not clear who made the call and when, or why there were only so many active entry gates.
There’s something almost familiar about this kind of institutional pointing of the finger before a big event. Even though everyone did their part, the system stopped working. KC2026 says it has sent FIFA suggestions before the next game on Saturday. The exact nature of these suggestions has not been made public.
This tournament was earned by Kansas City. Many people say that the city really wanted it, got ready for it, and put real money and work into building up the infrastructure around it. Another test will be on Saturday. Fans sitting on those shuttles will find out for themselves if the lessons from Tuesday were really learned or just mentioned in a press release.
