TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas is making a serious push to become the new home of the reigning championship. Super Bowl Winner Lawmakers approved the plan on Tuesday. For the sake of enticement Both the Chiefs and major league team Kansas City Royals will play out of Missouri.
A bipartisan legislative supermajority approved a bond measure to help finance new stadiums and practice facilities for both teams on the Kansas side of the metropolitan area of 2.3 million people, which is divided by the Missouri border. Three Super Bowl wins in five years and player Travis Kelce’s romance with pop icon Taylor Swift have made the Chiefs perhaps the region’s most admired civic asset.
Both the Chiefs and Royals have said they are open to exploring options in Kansas. Their leases on the Missouri complex that includes their adjacent stadiums run through January 2031, but both teams say they should have been planning for the future already.
“We’re excited about what happened here today,” Chiefs attorney Korb Maxwell, who lives on the Kansas side, said at the state Capitol after the bill passed the state Legislature. “This is unbelievably real.”
This approval is April Rejection Missouri voters approved continuing a local sales tax that helps pay for the upkeep of team stadiums.
A panoramic view of GEHA Field before the NFL Super Wild Card Weekend playoff game between the Miami Dolphins and the Kansas City Chiefs at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri on January 13, 2024. (Kara Durrett/Getty Images)
Supporters of the plan say government subsidies for professional sports stadiums are Not worth the costLawmakers also overcame criticism that they were moving too quickly.
A spokesman for Missouri Gov. Mike Parson did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment, but Kansas City, Missouri, Mayor Quinton Lucas promised to “make a good offer” to keep both teams in the city.
“Today’s game, in my opinion, was mainly about leverage,” Lucas said, “and both teams are in exceptionally favorable positions.”
Some Kansas officials have come to a similar conclusion.
“I think the Chiefs and Royals are taking advantage of us,” said state Rep. Susan Lewis, a Kansas City-area Democrat.
Kansas votes on stadium funding plan 84-38 In the state legislature 27-8 The bill passed the Senate, and lawmakers from across the state, including in western Kansas far from the new stadium, supported it.
The bill would allow up to 70 percent of the construction costs of each new stadium to be funded with state bonds, to be paid back over 30 years with new sales and liquor taxes from sports betting, state lottery proceeds and shopping and entertainment districts around the new stadiums.
House Commerce Committee Chairman Shawn Tarwater, a Kansas City-area Republican, said the Chiefs would still likely spend $500 million to $700 million in private funds to build a new stadium.
“There is no blank check,” Tarwater told his Republican colleagues at a news conference.
Lawmakers discussed the plan during a one-day special session called by Kelly, who said she He rejected three tax cut plans. before lawmakers adjourn for their regular annual session on May 1.
Republican leaders had promised that no stadium proposal would come forward until the Legislature approved a plan to cut income and property taxes. Total: $1.23 billion Many lawmakers argued that voters would be angered if the state helped fund a new stadium without cutting taxes over the next three years.
The tax bill’s passage garnered support from lawmakers who had viewed the stadium plan as a handout to wealthy team owners, some of whom said the team risked leaving the Kansas City area if action wasn’t taken, while others said they’d wanted the Chiefs to be in Kansas since they were kids.
“It’s amazing how quickly we can solve a problem that affects the wealthy and businesses,” said Rep. Jason Probst, a Democrat from central Kansas.
But Probst voted in favor of the bill.
“This is a system we’re trapped in, and if we choose to get out of this system, we’re going to lose every time,” he said.
Economists who study professional sports teams have concluded in dozens of studies that new stadiums and shopping and entertainment areas simply take away existing economic activity from elsewhere in a community, with little or no net benefit.
“It might still help Kansas, but it might hurt Missouri just as much,” said Andrew Zimbalist, an economics professor at Smith College in central Massachusetts and author of several books on sports. “It’s a zero-sum game.”
A skeptical Kansas City-area Republican senator, Molly Baumgardner, used a Christmas Eve analogy to describe her supporters’ excitement before casting her no vote.
“There’s a sugar candy phantom,” Baumgardner said.
