KANSAS CITY, Kan. — For the Sporting Kansas City soccer club, everything on the other side of the fence is greener. Well, besides the grass.

With a playing pitch fried by summer sun on the Kansas prairie, the Major League Soccer team ripped up its Kentucky bluegrass in favor of Bermuda before its June 18 U.S. Open Cup match against Minnesota United FC.

It was but a cosmetic change for a franchise that already had been remade from top to bottom. Once so moribund that MLS considered relocating the team, Sporting KC is now the league’s model franchise, the reigning champion with a 45-match sellout streak.

It is Sporting KC’s success, and its “crown jewel” stadium, Sporting Park, that have drawn two Twin Cities groups competing for an MLS franchise to Kansas City over the past six months.

On one side are the Vikings, who have been vocal in their desire to field an MLS team in the new, nearly $1 billion stadium being built on the site of the old Metrodome. On the other is a conglomeration of the Twins, Timberwolves and Minnesota United that hopes to build a soccer-specific stadium in a state already suffering from stadium fatigue.

Both groups want to incorporate some of Sporting KC’s successful strategies into their estimated $80 million bids to be among the 24 teams MLS wants competing by 2020.

‘CROWN JEWEL’

Sporting Park was built in 2011 as a Taj Mahal to soccer. If it isn’t quite that spectacular, it’s at least on par with Target Field.

Built with $200 million of public money, the steel-and-glass shrine holds 18,500 seats, features five club areas and sits on 13 acres 23 miles west of Arrowhead Stadium, the team’s original home.

It’s amid the winding streets of suburbia, neighbors to Nebraska Furniture Mart, countless restaurants and motels and the Kansas Speedway.

“It’s the crown jewel of American soccer,” said Wes Burdine, a Minnesota United fan who traveled from Minneapolis to catch his side’s match in the U.S. Open Cup earlier this month.

In the race to bring MLS to Minnesota, the Vikings, set to open their new stadium in fall 2016, might seem to have the upper hand. But MLS wants stadiums built for soccer, something 15 of the 19 current MLS teams have.

Sporting Park recently was the site of the U.S. national team’s World Cup qualifiers.

“Soccer-specific stadiums are No. 1; they will tell you that,” said Andy Tretiak, Sporting KC’s chief marketing officer.

The Minnesota United group is exploring opportunities to build a soccer-specific stadium in the farmers’ market area of Minneapolis or at a site near the Mall of America in Bloomington.

Real estate developer Chuck Leer — chairman of 2020 Partners, the group that suggested the farmers’ market site — believes a stadium can be built for between $100 million and $150 million on less than 10 acres currently held by industrial tenants. It would not “impinge” on the farmers’ market, he said.

Meanwhile, the Vikings would house the expansion soccer franchise in a $976 million, fixed-roof stadium, the result of a long funding battle that ultimately drew $498 million in taxpayer dollars.

“It doesn’t have to be soccer-only stadiums,” Tretiak said, “but when a soccer event is going on, it has to feel like that.”

The Seattle Sounders FC, for instance, draw a rabid following to CenturyLink Field, which they share with the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks. On game days, hundreds of fans walk to the 67,000-seat stadium at the southern edge of downtown Seattle.

The Vikings’ bid will include a “house-reduction mechanism” in its new 65,400-seat stadium that would bring capacity for soccer down to between 20,000 and 25,000.

United’s stadium presumably wouldn’t require modifications.

“(Sporting Park) is what American soccer is built on, not a life-sucking dome,” said Burdine, the United fan. “It’s the way it holds the atmosphere and all the details.”

Burdine and pal Bill Stenross recalled when former soccer star/pop culture icon David Beckham and the Los Angeles Galaxy played the Minnesota Thunder in front of 20,000 at the Metrodome in 2007.

“It was still dead,” Stenross said.

But if MLS wants a soccer-specific stadium, the United group headed by former United HealthCare CEO Bill McGuire will have an uphill battle for any public funding.

Minneapolis committed $150 million of the public money for the Vikings’ new stadium, and Hennepin County paid for most of the Twins’ $545 million stadium, which opened in 2010.

Minneapolis City Council President Barbara Johnson said of a potential soccer stadium in Minneapolis, “It (had) better be privately financed. Taxpayers are funding half of a one billion dollar stadium that is being built to accommodate soccer.”

For Sporting KC, an unaccommodating Arrowhead Stadium was helpful in almost killing the club, which at the time was known as the Wizards.

ROCKY START

When representatives from the current 19 MLS teams descended on Sporting Park for its All-Star Game last July, MLS Commissioner Don Garber called Sporting KC one of the greatest rebirths in sports.

A few years ago, “a majority of Kansas City didn’t even know we existed,” Garber was quoted by MLS.com. And now “the entire city has bought into us.”

In 1996, the Kansas City Wizards were one of 10 original MLS franchises. But despite a league title in 2000, they were floundering in Arrowhead Stadium within a decade.

Although the field might have been green, it was lined for the Chiefs’ NFL games and wasn’t homey to soccer. The Wizards averaged between 9,000 and 12,000 fans.

“We were playing in a 70,000-seat NFL stadium, and even if we had 20,000, it looked empty,” Tretiak said. “The atmosphere wasn’t good.”

Some MLS executives were calling for the club’s relocation.

As the Wizards lagged in 2006, owner Lamar Hunt sold the franchise to a group of five Kansas City businessmen. The Wizards then rented the outfield of a minor league baseball field and played in front of about 7,000 fans a game until their new tailor-made home was ready.

‘CULT-LIKE FOLLOWING’

At Sporting Park, no fancy curtains are used to make soccer feel like the marquee event, only fan-made banners that dangle in “The Cualdron” behind the north goal.

During the U.S. Open Cup match against Minnesota United, one of the banners read “Welcome to the Blue Hell.” But membership in The Cauldron fan group is far from eternal damnation. The few thousand in the group are in the Member’s Club, an industrial chic area tucked into one corner of the stadium. With metal chairs and $3 beers, The Cauldron hosts drum circles after games and banner-painting parties before them.

Sporting KC even stores the drums and banners for fans.

“You can’t manufacture tradition,” Tretiak said, “But it’s something we want to support (and) create — the little touches to have the home-field advantage we want.”

While The Cauldron is a vestige to its Wizards days, nearly everything else was new when the stadium was christened. The name Sporting KC was inspired from monikers used by European clubs, mainly elite European club Sporting Lisbon of Portugal’s Primeira Liga.

“Our ownership liked the idea of doing something unique and different and not having your traditional geographic identifier and nickname or mascot,” Tretiak said. “We got a little bit of a Euro-poser criticism, but we felt that term was best going to represent where we were going as an organization.”

Seeking a similar new direction last year, McGuire purchased Minnesota’s North American Soccer League team, formerly known as the Thunder and Stars, and rebranded it as United FC, a name influenced by the English Premier League.

If McGuire wins the MLS bid and United becomes that club, perhaps the “Dark Clouds,” a similar vestige to the club’s days as the Thunder, would find a home in the team’s new stadium. About 50 Dark Clouds members were in Sporting Park for their team’s 2-0 loss to Sporting KC in the Open Cup.

When the Vikings group visited Kansas City in May, Tretiak said from-scratch branding was a key topic of discussion.

“The most important thing that we talked about was establishing a unique brand for the soccer team that could complement the Vikings, but not necessarily be part and parcel with them,” Tretiak said. “If you look at (MLS’) New England Revolution, they have had difficulty in establishing an identity because they play in the same stadium (as the NFL’s) Patriots.”

Once the Wizards rebranded, Sporting KC had little trouble gaining traction. “The young people loved it because it had this counter-culture element,” Tretiak said.

Sporting KC is averaging 19,715 fans a game, with standing room, above the league average of 18,512. For comparison, United has averaged about 5,300 for home games at the National Sports Center and the Metrodome in the past two years.

After the team’s 1-6-3 start on the road before Sporting Park opened in 2011, Sporting KC rallied to win the Eastern Conference title.

The happily-ever-after life continued in 2012 when a wedding was held at Sporting Park. The bridesmaids wore dresses that matched Sporting’s baby blue team color.

“Hate to say it, but it’s a bit of a cult-like following,” Tretiak said.

In 2013, Sporting unveiled its “third kit,” an alternate jersey combo with a black, dark blue and baby blue argyle pattern. At halftime of that match against Portland, the franchise sold more jerseys — about 1,000 — than the Wizards sold in all of 2010.

“We felt pretty good about the design, but we didn’t know how rabid they would be about it,” Tretiak said. “It just took off.”

In 2010, the Wizards accomplished the remarkable feat of being ranked 19th in merchandise sales in a 16-team league. That’s because they were behind two expansion franchises and generic MLS gear.

Now, Sporting KC’s merchandise ranks second.

Follow Andy Greder at twitter.com/andygreder.