JEFFERSON CITY, Missouri – Missouri Gov. Mike Parson said Thursday he expects the state to come up with an aid plan by the end of the year to try to prevent the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals from being lured across state lines to new stadiums in Kansas.
Missouri’s renewed efforts come after Kansas approved a plan last week, this would finance up to 70% of the cost of new stadiums for professional football and baseball teams.
“We’re going to make sure we put the best deal possible on the line,” Parson told reporters as he presented the Chiefs’ two most recent Super Bowl trophies at the Capitol, where fans lined up to take photos.
“Look, I can’t blame Kansas for trying,” Parson added. “You know, if I was probably sitting there, I’d be doing the same thing. But at the end of the day we will be competitive.”
The Chiefs and Royals have played for more than 50 years in side-by-side stadiums built east of Kansas City, drawing fans from both states in the divided metropolitan area. The stadium lease runs through 2031. But Royals owner John Sherman said the team will not play at Kauffman Stadium after the 2030 season, expressing a preference for a new stadium downtown.
Questions about the teams’ future intensified after Jackson County, Missouri, voters in April rejected a sales tax that would have helped finance a $2 billion-plus downtown stadium district for the Royals and an $800 million renovation of the Chiefs’ Arrowhead Stadium.
The tax plan faced several obstacles. Some Royals fans preferred the teams’ current website. Others opposed the tax. And still others were concerned about the new stadium plans, which were changed just weeks before the vote.
The emergence of Kansas as an alternative raised the stakes for Missouri officials and repeated a common pattern among professional sports teams, which often leverage one website against another in an effort to obtain the largest public subsidies for new or improved stadiums.
Sports teams are promoting new wave of stadium construction across the U.S., going beyond basic repairs to capture new revenue from luxury suites, restaurants, shops and other developments around their stadiums. On Tuesday, the city of Jacksonville, Florida, approved a $1.25 billion stadium renovation plan for the NFL’s Jaguars that splits the cost between the city and the team.
Many economists argue that while stadiums can raise tax revenues in their immediate area, they tend to divert consumer spending from other entertainment and rarely generate enough new economic activity to offset all public subsidies.
Parson said “the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals are a big deal,” comparing them to large companies that received public assistance, such as Boeing, Ford and General Motors. But he added that any deal “has to work on paper, where it will be beneficial to Missouri taxpayers.”
“I think by the end of this year we will have something ready” to propose for stadiums, Parson said.
Missouri’s still-undefined plan would likely require legislative approval, but Parson said he does not anticipate calling a special legislative session before his term ends in January. That means any plan developed by Parson’s administration in partnership with Kansas City-area officials would also need the support of the next governor and a new slate of lawmakers.
Now that Kansas has enacted a funding law, discussions between sports teams and the Kansas Department of Commerce could begin at any time, but the agency has no deadline for reaching a deal, spokesman Patrick Lowry said Thursday. fair.
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Associated Press writer John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas, contributed to this report.
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