Ticket 2 Ride

SOMEWHERE IN EASTERN KS. (December 22, 2025)

The Kansas City Chiefs will be moving from Missouri to Kansas, so they can still legitimately use the word Kansas in their name. Although a Chiefs fan for 55 years, I have mixed feelings about this announcement.

I feel bad for the taxpayers of Jackson County, Missouri, who have paid the freight on Arrowhead Stadium for decades, as game tickets have become unaffordable for a sizable number of residents who have paid the lions share of tax revenues that have supported the upgrades and annual maintenance of the stadium. They have a right to be upset, even after defeating a sales tax vote that called for continuing the 3/8th cent sales tax for 40 years. The vote wasn’t close. The campaign slogan, “Billions for Billionaires” was probably a mistake.

The Chiefs have been complaining about Arrowhead Stadium for many years, each time, taxing jurisdictions have stepped up to meet the team’s demands. The threat to move a professional sports franchise is unfortunately a reality, and it is often more than a threat.

Arrowhead Stadium (screw the names sold that have also adorned the stadium) opened in 1972 as a football-only stadium. Kaufman Stadium, for the Kansas City Royals, sits right next door, they share the same parking lot. I was there in 1972 for the first Chiefs home game. It was a hot day!

The Chiefs worked both the State of Missouri and the State of Kansas, with legislators, governors and other important people from each state huddled in a scrum to find the best offer. Kansas Governor Laura Kelly did a touchdown dance at the news conference and spiked the microphone, then handed Chiefs Managing Owner Clark Hunt the keys to the Kansas treasury, which he gladly held over his head like a Super Bowl trophy (but not this year).

Reports released call for the new, domed stadium, and a separate headquarters and practice facility, to cost $3.3B, or roughly the cost of Donald Trump’s gold-plated ballroom. As part of this stadium plan is a mixed-use development, which means another way for the Hunt family to buy yachts or travel to space – the leisure experience of billionaires. Now, the State is issuing something called STAR bonds that are to be paid for from revenues from the project. The Guv also mentioned lottery revenues being a funding source. So, the next Super Bowl held in Wyandotte County, Kansas, will generate money from ticket sales, beer purchases, tax on football jerseys and other transactions occurring within the boundaries of the project area, so that mixed-use component could be a good thing. So, alcohol, gambling and the state-run brothel (hey, why not another sin taxed activity?) will pay for the public part of the financing. Private funding (anticipated to include loansharking, low-cost pharmaceuticals from Canada and Mexico), Trump bitcoins, Trump Cellular, Trump time-shares in Heaven, and other unique revenue generators (The DOJ has already said they won’t prosecute these).

My one serious point in this blog is who really benefits from this deal? The Chiefs ownership group obviously. Investors that buy into the mixed-use development, because professional football is a license to print money. Developers who build around these facilities. Lawyers, lenders, engineering firms and construction companies. If 20,000 jobs are created, and not just siphoned from Missouri, jobs that pay a livable wage, that is a benefit.

On the debit side are the costs for new infrastructure, and added maintenance of that infrastructure, public services for the additional events, businesses and residents, increased load on schools, healthcare services, and other costs to public entities that the Chiefs and politicians aren’t mentioning.

A state-of-the-art domed stadium may attract Super Bowls, Final Fours, concerts and other large spectator events that Arrowhead Stadium does not now attract. If you build it, they will come…and spend. Studies show that’s not always the case. “Thus, the large subsidies commonly devoted to constructing professional sports venues are not justified as worthwhile public investments,” according to The Impact of Professional Sports Franchises and Venues on Local Economies: A Comprehensive Survey. Hoping that your economic dream becomes reality is a bit like winning the Super Bowl. It does happen, the Chiefs have a bunch of trophies, but this year the fans who live in Missouri got an extra lump of coal to go with that nice DOGE rebate check (kidding).