As Saturday’s inaugural match between St. Louis CITY and Sporting Kansas City approaches, there’s a great debate raging on online message boards and social media platforms: Which city can rightfully claim the title of soccer capital of the United States: St. Louis or Kansas City?
The answer isn’t so straightforward. Just ask the hosts of the independent St. Louis CITY SC fan podcast River City Ramble.
Are you a CITY SC fan?
Subscribe to the CITY Scene newsletter to get a fan’s guide to the pro soccer scene in St. Louis.
The Dispute
When Mike and Mason Turner began producing a show dedicated to St. Louis soccer two years ago, they did so under the podcast name Soccer Capitol Podcast. It was a nod to both the region’s deep-rooted history with the sport and a play on the CITY SC moniker. In unveiling the team name in 2020, CITY’s marketing materials explained that “SC” had a double meaning: “Soccer Club” and “Soccer Capital.”
For the Turners—and the two additional hosts they recruited, Shjon Campbell and Chris Zimmermann—the name worked. Until it didn’t.
Earlier this spring, the hosts say a series of emails from Sporting Kansas City’s front office arrived in the inbox of the podcast’s Gmail account. The club believed the Soccer Capitol Podcast was infringing on the trademark “The Soccer Capital of America,” which was registered to Kansas Training Partners LLC, an affiliate company of Sporting Kansas City.
In a statement provided to SLM, a spokesperson for Sporting Kansas City explained: “We have had the trademark for quite some time and as with all federal trademarks, we are at risk of losing them if they are not protected/upheld. There is nothing personal around this at all, as this is commonplace in any business, especially the sports and entertainment industry.”
While the podcasters say they never received a cease-and-desist notification from Sporting Kansas City, they also didn’t want to risk a legal battle. So they changed the name of their show to River City Ramble.
The Reaction
In the days after the podcasters announced the new name of their show, in March, they received an outpouring of support from CITY fans. The number of people listening spiked, and the hosts soon saw River City Ramble ranked among some of the top soccer podcasts on the planet.
“We don’t monetize our podcast,” Mason Turner says. “We just do it out of the love of the game, which I think was also what was galling to our listeners.”
“At the same time, it was arguably one of the best things to happen to our show because listenership boomed so much,” says Campbell, who attended college in the Kansas City area and considered himself a Sporting supporter until recent years, when he began attending games for CITY’s academy teams and CITY2 last year. Today, he introduces himself as a “recovering Sporting KC fan.”
“I remember Mason asking me after we got the second email from the club, ‘So if you hadn’t already, I think it’s safe to say that you would have switched your loyalty completely at this point, right?’” Campbell says. “I told him that if I had any vestige of loyalty to that club at this point, it’s gone.”
The Rivalry
Now, as the first meeting between the two clubs approaches, Saturday’s match at CITYPARK has taken on additional significance.
Sports apparel company Olive & York began producing soccer jerseys with the River City Ramble name emblazoned on the front.
Last week, St. Louis CITY SC announced a new highway billboard marketing campaign called “The High Road: The Longest Soccer History Exhibit,” which features seven billboard displays on Interstate 70 and Highway 40 that note milestones in St. Louis soccer history. In a press release revealing the campaign, CITY said the billboards were “designed in partnership with the Missouri History Museum, to stand up for soccer fans in St. Louis and reclaim more than a century of soccer history.”
MLS acknowledged the rivalry in a recent tweet with an illustration of CITY’s Eduard Löwen and Sporting’s Alan Pulido playing tug-of-war with a scarf that includes the phrase “Soccer Capital of America.” “I thought that was really cool,” Campbell says. “The fact that the league recognizes this as a reason for the rivalry and not just because we’re geographically close, just shows how far this has gone.”
“That picture was a real surprise to me,” adds Mason. “I think why that happened is because all of this got away from what happened to us. It’s turned into fans sniping at each other about which city is actually the soccer capital. [Kansas City fans are saying], ‘You’re new. We’ve won MLS Cups. You don’t have any history.’ Actually, we have hundreds of years of history. We’ve won more. We have funeral homes that have won more U.S. Open Cups than your team has.”
Prior to kickoff for Saturday’s match, supporters at CITYPARK plan to raise banners about Sporting Kansas City’s decision to target the podcast.
In its statement to SLM, Sporting Kansas City noted, “We are excited that St. Louis CITY SC is a part of Major League Soccer and look forward to playing there this week.”
“I figured Sporting Kansas City would be our natural rival and that it’s going to be a pretty big game,” Mason says. “And then we got the emails from the front office. I’m trying not to let it have too much of a personal tinge because the guys on the field didn’t have anything to do with it, and I’d like to just let it be more of a natural sports rivalry.”
Mason pauses. “But I really want to beat this team.”
