Wizards’ biggest score

Buyers take over today, ending Lamar Hunt’s role with the franchise he brought to town in ’96

Published: Sept. 1, 2006

Lamar Hunt made the proposal at the Capital Grille on the Plaza.

Hunt’s Wizards had been for sale for nearly a year when he broke bread with Cerner Corp. co-founders Neal Patterson and Cliff Illig last December. Hunt’s pitch about the future of soccer was so strong that a group led by Patterson and Illig announced Thursday that it had bought the Wizards.

The sale ended a tumultuous 20-month period in which the Wizards twisted in the wind, and put to rest rumors of the team leaving town. It also closed the curtain on Kansas City’s soccer relationship with Hunt, who brought the franchise to town in 1996 and has been an eloquent spokesman for the sport over the last 40 years.

“We are standing on the shoulders of what Lamar and his family have done with soccer in this country,” Patterson said Thursday, “and to be able to come in at this time is an amazing opportunity.

“We see an opportunity at keeping professional soccer in Kansas City and helping make soccer the top professional sport in the United States by 2020.”

The Wizards will remain in the Kansas City area next season but are without a place to play. Extensive renovations to Arrowhead Stadium mean the team must find a temporary home as the new owners try to get a soccer-specific stadium built.

The group said it hopes to have a new stadium built by 2009, and meanwhile the Wizards will play in a retrofitted stadium in Johnson County, which is expected to be announced by mid-October.

The purchasing group, OnGoal LLC, also includes Pat Curran, David French, Greg Maday and Robb Heineman. The group declined to disclose what it paid for the team, but Major League Soccer Commissioner Don Garber said it exceeded the cost for an expansion team, which would be more than $15 million.

Earlier this year, a source told The Star that the group’s investment was in excess of $30 million, which included purchasing the team, working capital and an undetermined amount that would be used as seed money for a soccer-specific stadium, which the group hopes to build in south Overland Park.

Hunt put the team up for sale on Dec. 9, 2004, and said he hoped to find an owner that was committed to keeping the Wizards in Kansas City.

The first known buyer to come forward was New York businessman Andrew Murstein, who announced his intention to buy the team last summer, but his flirtation with the team ended after three months.

The Wizards also were rumored to be headed for San Antonio; Rochester, N.Y.; and, as recently as this summer, Philadelphia.

“As little as a month ago, it looked like maybe it was headed to another town,” Hunt said. “It was only over the last month that it became more solidified.”

Hunt and the new owners said that was because plans for a soccer complex in Johnson County have taken shape. Last week, Overland Park began laying the groundwork for securing a special state tax incentive to help finance a soccer-specific stadium at 159th Street and U.S. 69 as part of a complex that could include 24 youth soccer fields.

The Johnson County Park and Recreation District board voted 5-0 Monday night to place a $75 million bond question on the Nov. 7 ballot to build the youth fields that likely would be part of the complex.

It’s worth noting that Hunt’s initial stipulation for buying the team was that the new owners would have to have a stadium plan in place. Thursday’s sale announcement included no details of a stadium plan, but Hunt and Garber said they were confident a stadium would get built, especially considering Patterson and Illig’s success in founding Cerner, a leading supplier of health-care information technology based in North Kansas City.

“It was very important to find a local group that had passion for the sport,” Garber said, “but also had the ability, the resources and the facilities to secure the partnership to get a facility built.”

The new Wizards owners, who officially take over today, said the stadium deal is going to require people chipping in together.

“Kansas City is going to be a significant beneficiary, but we’re all going to have to work together to proceed,” Illig said.

But what if the stadium deal falls through?

“Go to Plan B,” Patterson said. “We’re business folks. You don’t build a company like Cerner (without) having a Plan B.

“But Plan A is going to work.”

That was welcome news for Hunt, who admitted being a little choked up at the notion of no longer owning the Wizards.

“I’m especially pleased to see us consummate a transaction with the end result of the Wizards continuing in Kansas City and the Kansas City metropolitan area,” Hunt said. “I’ll lead the applause on that one.”

A crowd of more than 100 people at the Overland Park Convention Center then joined Hunt in a round of applause.

Garber and the new owners praised Hunt for his commitment to keeping the team in Kansas City, a development that came about because he sold Patterson and Illig on soccer.

After that dinner on the Plaza, Illig and Patterson stopped for a drink.

“We went to a bar and I said, ‘This is the greatest sports entrepreneur ever,’ ” Patterson said. “He just explained the business of soccer and even though we’re buying the team that he created, we’re still partners at the league level.

“I told Cliff, we want to be in business with Lamar.”

And now they are, all because of that dinner date on Dec. 4 — a day Hunt was certain of because of the other Kansas City sports team he owns.

“The same day,” Hunt said, “that the Chiefs beat the Broncos.”

The Star’s Finn Bullers contributed to this report