Everything old is new again in Kansas City–and there, the old stuff is flying off the shelves.
Maybe it's nostalgia. Maybe it's a sense of history. Maybe it's irony. (A sports team named the “Wiz?" Seriously?) But for whatever reason, Sporting Kansas City's one-off throwback homage to their first MLS match, is proving wildly popular with the fans of 2016.
The team will, uh, sport the throwbacks in warmups for their home game Wednesday night (8:30 p.m. ET, MLS Live, Altitude 2) against the Colorado Rapids, but the jerseys have already been available to purchase locally by fans. And they're proving more popular, even, than some might have expected.
“Here's some context,” John Moncke, the club's vice president of stadium and brand revenue, told MLSsoccer.com on Tuesday. “By the end of the game tomorrow, we will sell more retro Wiz product than the Wizards sold in 2010, in terms of dollar amount. Unit-wise, I'm not sure, because I don't have the unit numbers from the Wizards phase.”
Just one detail: This merch doesn't say “Wizards," Sporting's name from 1997 through 2010, the year when the club rebranded and moved into what is now Children's Mercy Park. This throwback merch looks back all the way back to 1996, the league's inaugural season and the only one in which the club played under the Wiz name.
(The change came about not because people hated the name, by the way, but because it conflicted with the New York electronics chain Nobody Beats the Wiz.)
The Wiz and the Colorado Rapids played their first match exactly 20 years before Wednesday night's match-up at Children's Mercy Park, with the Rapids providing the opposition back then, too.
“Last year, we had the opportunity to kind of influence the schedule for 2016,” Moncke said. “One of the things that we wanted to make sure was that we had this game, on this date, against the same opponent. Luckily, we were able to get that put together.”
There will be other nods to that inaugural contest, like tickets for $19.96, 1990s music on the sound system, and old-school graphics on the scoreboard for player introductions. But the old-school Wizards kit, which Sporting's players will wear during warmups, is the starring attraction. (Their game jerseys will feature 1990s-style numbers as well.)
The club staged an early roll-out of the jerseys last weekend, Moncke said, during an away-game watch party at No Other Pub, the Sporting-owned bar in Kansas City's trendy Power & Light District.
“We did a limited amount of the jerseys and the scarves,” he said, “and the jerseys sold out within a few minutes, the allotment we had given over there.”
Fans on Wednesday will also be able to buy similarly themed caps and T-shirts, in addition to the scarves and warmup kits.
MLS' early kits were “eye-catching,” it's safe to say–though but “garish” would not be out of line–by contemporary standards. But that's part of their charm 20 years on, Moncke said.
“You see the reinterpretation on this pregame jersey,” he said. “My gut is, 'It's so bad that it's good.' I think that's what most people think when you look at it. It's really so bad that it's kind of good. You can wear it now with a sense of irony, and that pregame jersey actually looks pretty cool.”
And, he said, people have to remember that tastes change over the years.
“Fashion is something that you've got to take within context, just like architecture,” Moncke said. “And so it reflects the culture at the time, and it's hard to remember at this time that culturally, those looks were relevant. Maybe 20 years from now, someone like you and I will be talking, and they'll be looking back at what we're doing now and having a similar conversation, like 'What were they thinking in 2016?'”
Steve Brisendine covers Sporting Kansas City for MLSsoccer.com. Twitter: @SteveBrisendine
