Politics, Elections and Government

Kansas City, Missouri, pulls out of ‘border war’ truce as Kansas works to poach Chiefs and Royals

KCUR | By Kowthar Shire

Published September 22, 2025 at 4:00 AM CDT

Chiefs fans line up along Grand Boulevard in Kansas City before the start of the Super Bowl victory parade on Feb. 15, 2023.

The Kansas City Council ended its years-long agreement to stop the economic tug of war between the Kansas and Missouri sides of the metro. Both states offered big incentives to the Chiefs and Royals, but neither team have said yet where they'll go.

A six-year-old truce between Kansas and Missouri to stop competing with hefty tax incentives to lure companies from one side of the state line to the other has ended, with the Kansas City City Council voting unanimously to repeal it on Thursday.

Missouri’s limits on cross-border subsidies had already expired at the end of last month.

Mayor Quinton Lucas stated at the most recent Missouri General Assembly that the truce has not held.

Its official end follows increasing tensions between Kansas and Missouri over their competing bids for the Chiefs and Royals.

The fierce competition between businesses across the state line saw companies hop from side to side every few years to capitalize on tax breaks, which experts said cost both states millions. And for some time after Kansas and Missouri struck the truce, economists in the region believed it was working.

However, Kansas legislators’ moves to attract the Chiefs and Royals stadiums over to their side — and Missouri’s own attempts to keep the teams — threatened the stability of the truce.

The Kansas City metro is split down the middle by the Missouri-Kansas state line. For years, the competition between each state to snag businesses cost the area millions in taxes.

After Jackson County voters rejected a stadium tax in April 2024 that would have helped retain both teams, Kansas saw an opening.

Kansas lawmakers passed a bill just months later to create special tax incentives for sports companies building stadiums in Kansas.

Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly initially denied claims that the move intended to recruit the Chiefs, but spoke of the potential of the Chiefs and Royals joining Sporting KC in Kansas in a later statement.

After an affiliate of the Royals acquired the Aspiria campus in Overland Park earlier this year, Kansas seemed in the lead to acquire the teams, and the revenue they bring.

But as the initial deadline for the Kansas incentives deal drew near, Missouri legislators followed up with a counter stadium funding plan to keep the Chiefs and Royals where they are.

Both states’ offers of heftier tax incentives to lure the teams to make a decision after a drawn-out waiting game showed the border war truce wasn’t blocking inter-state competition.

Kansas’ offer to the Royals and Chiefs expires in June 2026, but the Sunflower State has said they want an answer by the end of this year.