Sporting Kansas City Logo PNG
The soccer club emphasizes its impeccable image with a simple yet attractive emblem. Designers made the Sporting Kansas City logo stylish to showcase the brand’s modernity and appeal to younger athletes and fans.
Sporting Kansas City is a Major League Soccer team representing two cities. It’s located in Kansas City, Missouri, but plays home matches on the other side of the river, in Kansas City, Kansas. The team moved from the Eastern Conference to the Western Conference in 2010.
On June 6, 1995, the club was introduced as one of the original ten members of MLS. Four months later, the league published its logo and original name, Kansas City Wiz. Franchise founder and owner Lamar Hunt asserted that “Wiz” had nothing to do with “The Wizard of Oz.” However, to Rob Thomson, Executive Vice President of SKC, it was evident that it referred to Dorothy from Kansas.
Due to claims filed by the New York-based electronics retailer Nobody Beats the Wiz, the team was renamed the Kansas City Wizards in 1996. On August 31, 2006, the Hunt Sports Group sold the soccer club to OnGoal LLC, a group of 6 people led by Cliff Illig and Neal Patterson.
In 2010, the businessmen renamed the franchise to “Sporting Kansas City”. This reflects European influence, particularly from Portugal’s “Sporting Lisbon”. The rebranding had been in preparation since 2007. Among the names considered were “Bees” and “Fountains,” but the owners ultimately chose “Sporting.” They wanted to include rugby and lacrosse teams in the sports organization, but were unable to do so.
The renaming resulted in a change to the color palette. The official scheme includes plum, dark indigo, and Sporting blue. The latter was proposed by Cliff Illig, who borrowed it from the women’s basketball franchise Kansas Jayhawks.
Now, “Sporting Kansas City” is owned by Sporting Club (formerly OnGoal LLC). It’s managed by Kansas City business community leaders Pat Curran, Greg Maday, Robb Heineman, Cliff Illig, and the Patterson family.
Meaning and History
Sporting Kansas City had several logos. Initially, the “Sporting Kansas City” logo featured a flying ball, rainbow lines, and the stylish word “Wiz,” which was later replaced with “Wizards” after the team’s renaming. The graphic symbol was updated in 2011 after the team moved to Children’s Mercy Park. Slant Design Lab developed the current version.
What is Sporting Kansas City?
Sporting Kansas City is an American professional soccer club, an MLS member, and a representative of the Western Conference. The club’s administrative center is located in Kansas City, Missouri, and its training bases are in Kansas City, Kansas. The club was founded in 1995 by businessman Lamar Hunt and began playing the following year.
1996-1997
In Sporting Kansas City’s history, there was a long period when it was known as the “Kansas City Wizards.” At that time, the team had several logos featuring this nickname. The first one was a heraldic shield shaped like an inverted drop, with a black-and-white soccer ball from which four multicolored stripes (yellow, red, green, and purple) radiated. The ball was depicted on a blue background, with the word “WIZ” compressed at the edges below it.
1997 – 2006
The second version of the emblem looked slightly different. The top part of the shield remained semicircular, but the stripe colors changed. Red and green switched places, and blue replaced purple. The shape of the bottom half of the emblem was entirely different: it was a pentagon, inside which was the club’s full nickname. The word “WIZARDS” was written in pointed letters of varying sizes.
2006 – 2010
In 2007, designers removed the blue semicircle with the ball and multicolored lines. Only the bottom half of the shield remained, but it was given a new shape. Now, it wasn’t a simple pentagon but a complex shape with two triangular protrusions at the top. It bore the words “KANSAS CITY WIZARDS”: the first two in blue and the third, as before, in white.
2010 – today
The drop shape of the Sporting Kansas City logo remained unchanged. The triangular heraldic shiel, with curled edges, is outlined by a white border. The outer contour is plum-colored. The left side of the design is occupied by 11 blue and pale-blue lines, one for each player on the field. The cipher “SC” (from “Sporting Club”) is located on the right, set against a dark blue background.
The interlaced letters were inspired by the Spanish architecture of the famous Country Club Plaza shopping center, the Hellenic statue of Winged Victory of Samothrace, and the rod of Asclepius. This is a well-known medical symbol of vitality and health. It’s used as a reference because the CEO and Vice President of the medical company Cerner Corporation are one of the club’s co-owners.
The two sides of the Sporting Kansas City logo symbolize the neighboring cities, Kansas City, Missouri (right) and Kansas City, Kansas (left). They are divided by an imaginary line representing the state border between East and West. Two white inscriptions are placed on top: “Kansas City” on the plum border and “Sporting” inside the shield. The stylish sans-serif font, with straight, sharp angles, was developed for the soccer club by designers at Slant Design Lab.
Font and Colors
Until 2010, the team used a word mark whose main advantage was its unusual letter design. After the redesign in 2011, the players’ jerseys were adorned with an entirely different emblem: a drop-shaped shield (a nod to the first Kansas City Wizards logo) with eleven light and dark blue stripes (as many as the people represent on the field). An important part of the design became the monogram of intertwined “SC” letters.
Designers specifically developed a font for the Sporting Kansas City emblem, officially related to medicine. This is because the vice president and CEO of the American corporation Cerner is part of the club’s ownership group, making the medical theme quite fitting.
The color palette is also not as simple as it seems. For instance, the Sporting Blue color (#93B1D7) was borrowed from another basketball team in another city. To achieve visual harmony, it was combined with dark indigo (#002A5C) and lead (#A0A1A5). The resulting combination is complemented by white, the basis for inscriptions and crests.