The Kansas Legislature's bipartisan effort to lure the Missouri-based Kansas City Chiefs and Royals to their state took a major step forward Tuesday with the approval of a measure to authorize state bonds to help finance new stadiums and practice facilities for both teams.
As reported by The Associated Press, Kansas City's metropolitan area of 2.3 million residents is split by the border with Missouri. The plan from the Republican-controlled Legislature goes next to Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly. While she stopped short of promising to sign it, she said in a statement that “Kansas now has the opportunity to become a professional sports powerhouse.”
Both the Chiefs and the Royals said they look forward to considering Kansas options, the AP's John Hanna reported. The lease on the Missouri complex with their side-by-side stadiums runs through January 2031. Missouri voters recently rejected allowing taxpayer funds to build a new stadium for the Royals and major renovations to Arrowhead Stadium, a somewhat surprising turn of events given the Chiefs' status as one of the NFL's premier franchises. The team has one three Super Bowls in the past five years, including the most recent two.
Related: Missouri Voters Reject Stadium Tax for Royals, Chiefs
“We’re excited about what happened here today,” Korb Maxwell, an attorney for the Chiefs who lives on the Kansas side, said at the Statehouse after the bill cleared the Legislature. “This is incredibly real.”
The approval capped a two-month push to capitalize on the April vote by Missouri taxpayers.
Related: Chiefs, Royals Stadium Tax Was Most Expensive K.C. Ballot Campaign Ever
"Backers of the plan brushed aside decades of research by economists concluding that government subsidies for professional sports stadiums are not worth the cost," Hanna reported. "They also overcame criticism that lawmakers were moving too quickly."
Economists who study pro sports teams have concluded in dozens of studies that a new stadium and shopping-and-entertainment area merely takes existing economic activity away from elsewhere in a community, resulting in little or no net gain.
“It could still help Kansas and maybe hurt Missouri by the same amount,” said Andrew Zimbalist, an economics professor at Smith college in central Massachusetts who has written multiple books about sports. “It’s a zero-sum game.”
The votes on the Kansas stadium-financing plan were 84-38 in the House and 27-8 in the Senate. Lawmakers from across the state — even western Kansas, far from any new stadium — supported the measure.
It would allow state bonds to cover up to 70 percent of each new stadium, paying them off over 30 years with revenues from sports betting, state lottery ticket sales and new sales and alcohol taxes collected from shopping and entertainment districts around the new stadiums, Hanna reported.
"With the tax bill passed, the stadium plan gained support even from lawmakers who saw it as a handout for wealthy team owners," he wrote. "Some said failing to act risked pushing the teams to leave the Kansas City area, and a few said they had wanted the Chiefs in Kansas since childhood."
