Robb Heineman may be the public face of Sporting Kansas City's ownership group, Sporting Club, and the late Neal Patterson may have been credited as the "driving force" behind the club's revival, but in the five-person group another owner, Cliff Illig, played a key role as well.
Illig, who co-founded the Cerner Corporation with Patterson and in 2006 went on to purchase Sporting KC, then known as the Kansas City Wizards, spoke about the process in a long-form profile in the Kansas City Star by Sam Mellinger on Friday.
After setting down roots in Kansas City and becoming a venture capitalist aiming to bring economic clout to the region beyond the health-records business that became Cerner, Illig was approached by one of the key figures in MLS history, Lamar Hunt, to see if the soccer club could be a credit to the area and to MLS alike.
“My dad knew a couple things about them,” Clark Hunt, Lamar Hunt’s son and current chairman and CEO of the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs, said of Illig and Patterson, as quoted in the profile. “They had the financial resources to make it work over the long haul, and they were very engaged in Kansas City and doing things that were good for Kansas City. In my dad’s mind, that probably made them perfect.”
“Are we going to do this?” Patterson asked Illig.
“I don’t think we have any choice,” Illig said.
They took the plunge, bought the team, rebranded, built Children's Mercy Park, a new national soccer training center, set up a reserve team, and the rest is history. Since buying the club Illig and Sporting Club have seen Sporting KC win MLS Cup in 2013 and three U.S. Open Cup titles.
You can read about Illig's influence on Sporting KC and MLS, as well as his varied interests in a distinguished career, in full at the Kansas City Star.
