For more than 50 years, the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals have called adjacent stadiums in eastern Kansas City, Missouri, home.
The teams’ future at Truman Sports Complex, though, is increasingly in doubt as the franchises ponder options on both sides of the state line and as officials in the Jackson County Legislature and Missouri General Assembly struggle to coordinate a “Missouri solution” to keep the teams in the state.
Stadium uncertainty surged after the Royals announced they were exploring stadium options elsewhere, including downtown and North Kansas City. The Chiefs, meanwhile, said they were exploring ways to upgrade Arrowhead Stadium as well as other options, including moving to Kansas.
Both teams said they would stay in Jackson County if voters renewed a 3/8-percent sales tax to help them upgrade or build their stadiums. But an overwhelming majority of Jackson County voters rejected that idea in April 2024.
The debate comes at a time when stadium costs are soaring. Washington, D.C., just announced a deal to build a new football stadium for the Washington Commanders, which comes with a $3.7 billion price tag. The District of Columbia will contribute $1.1 billion in public financing to help cover costs of the stadium and surrounding housing and commercial projects, including $500 million from a city tax on large corporations.
This year, Kansas City-area lawmakers in the Missouri General Assembly have coalesced around two main efforts to keep the teams in the state. But a push to make state funding available to the teams appears doomed as the legislature enters the final weeks of session.
Keeping the Chiefs and Royals in Jackson County
In February, three Kansas City-area lawmakers proposed identical bills to create a state assistance program for stadiums and other event venues.
Under the bills filed by Rep. Mark Sharp, a Kansas City Democrat, Rep. Sherri Gallick, a Belton Republican, and Sen. Barbara Washington, a Kansas City Democrat, the state would incentivize investment in new and existing facilities through grants, withholding-tax retention and tax-increment financing.
To participate in the program, the project must be at least one-third privately funded, be able to seat at least 20,000 people and have a minimum $250 million price tag.
Those bills were filed days after House Speaker Jon Patterson, a Lee’s Summit Republican, said he believed “time is running out” on keeping the teams in Missouri but said “this is going to be something that has to happen in the county first and then the state.”
None of those bills has been referred to a committee, even as the legislative session enters its final weeks.
When asked why there had been little movement on the bills, House Majority Floor Leader Alex Riley, a Republican from Springfield, said that “as of now, that’s not something I’ve spent a lot of time looking at. I haven’t heard a lot about those bills.”
Sharp said House and Senate leadership have declined to move forward with his, Gallick’s and Washington’s bills until Jackson County passes a new sales tax.
“The state legislature won’t do anything until Jackson County renews the 3/8-percent sales tax,” Sharp said. “There is no reason why the state needs to wait. The state could move forward with this legislation as it currently stands. They’re just choosing not to.”
“You have people — mainly Republicans — who looked at the failed vote last year and think, ‘Oh well, people must not want these sports teams anymore,’ which could not be further from the truth,” Sharp added.
Citing conversations with his constituents and other local residents, Sharp believes most residents want the teams to stay in the county, ideally at their current stadium locations. The April 2024 ballot question had included a proposal for a new Royals stadium in downtown Kansas City.
“Most folks who paid any attention know that the vote failed last year because people didn’t want a Royals stadium where they were trying to put it, not because we don’t want professional sports teams in our city,” Sharp said. “It was a shame those two things were coupled together.”
After voters rejected the proposal to build a new Royals stadium at a site in the Crossroads, Kansas City officials began exploring the possibility of a new stadium at Washington Square Park instead.
A local firm entered a contract to buy part of the site and began working with investors to get the pieces in place to pitch the new location to the Royals. After eight months with no concrete commitment from the team, the firm decided to terminate its contract.
Jackson County — which is currently mired in a battle over the county budget — will not be able to get something over the finish line in time and hasn’t shown interest in doing so, Sharp said.
Asked why, he replied, “Dysfunction.”
Because the Chiefs set a deadline of June 20 — when they want to be able to announce a decision about future stadium plans — the path forward looks “rough,” Sharp said.
“June? We’re not going to have anything done by June. June? That’s almost like a slap in the face. There’s no way we can get anything done by June,” he said.
Caleb Clifford, the chief of staff for Jackson County Executive Frank White Jr., said that while White had been involved in discussions with the Chiefs and Royals, “there are not active discussions happening right now.”
However, he said it is probable that the teams are involved in discussions with members of the county Legislature.
“That is part of what led us to the situation that we had last year where they stopped talking with the administration because they weren’t getting the answers they wanted, then they went to the Legislature and got everything they wanted and more,” he said.
Clifford said that since White hadn’t supported the initial plan out of concern that the county and residents would bear a disproportionate burden, the vote only affirmed his opposition to the plan. But he said White was open to working with the teams and other stakeholders to create a new plan and put the question on the ballot again in the future.
“The county executive’s position has been clear from the beginning. We will not start planning for an election until we have an agreement in place, and at this point, that agreement’s not in place,” Clifford said. “Once that happens, we will work collectively with the teams and other interested parties to determine the best timing of an election.”
Asked what the plan would need to look like, Clifford said, “It would have to be a detailed plan that’s substantive and provides significant benefits to the community while balancing the amount of investment that the taxpayers are making to these facilities.”
White “is not interested in moving forward with the status quo,” Clifford added. “He believes that Jackson County deserves better, and he thinks they can get better.”
A Clay County alternative
Another bill before the Missouri legislature has gotten considerably more traction. It would establish a Clay County Sports Authority, a regulatory body responsible for developing and maintaining sports and other event venues in the county.
Identical bills were sponsored by Sen. Maggie Nurrenbern, a Kansas City Democrat, Sen. Kurtis Gregory, a Marshall Republican, and Rep. Bill Allen, a Kansas City Republican.
Since the Royals began looking at potential sites for a new stadium, Clay County has vied to be a contender and has pushed to create a sports authority to help it work with and attract the team, Nurrenbern said.
She said a new stadium — which she and others in the county envision as a Wrigley Field-esque ballpark district, with shops and restaurants surrounding the facility — would bring new life to 70 acres of predominantly industrial land in North Kansas City and drive economic development in the area.
“When we look at a sports team, the reality is there are hundreds of people employed by those teams,” she said. “Eighty-two games a year brings in a lot of people to your area, people who are going to stop and grab a bite to eat (or) run by a grocery store and (get things to) have a tailgate.”
Jerry Nolte, presiding commissioner of the Clay County Commission, has visited Jefferson City several times this session to testify in favor of the sports authority legislation. He’s been very encouraged by the lack of pushback on the proposal, which was recently passed by the Senate and voted out of a House committee.
The Royals recently polled Clay County residents about whether they would support the team coming to the county, as well as a new sales tax to help fund stadium construction.
The poll’s findings are not yet publicly available, but Nurrenbern said her “understanding is that the polling results have been favorable.”
Nurrenbern — who said she has not been in touch with either team this legislative session — said constituents “reach out constantly about this,” with many “interested in learning more.”
“Many of them shared reservations about spending significant state revenue on the stadium when, for example, the governor’s (budget) proposal didn’t fully fund the (public school) foundation formula. We fund a lot of our social services at rates lower than nearly every other state in the nation,” she said. “A lot of my constituents wanted to make sure that we continue to make investments in vital services and really were hesitant to see any state funding go towards the stadium.”
Nurrenbern said she understood and shared these concerns, which is why she did not ask for any funding to be appropriated in the 2026 budget for the Clay County Sports Authority. But if the bill passes, the sports authority would legally be able to get upwards of $3 million annually from the state legislature.
She also said she understood constituents’ concerns about giving financial incentives to teams specifically.
“While I get that some might have frustrations about why we make special exceptions for professional sports teams, if we were talking about any other type of business that employs hundreds of (people) and injects millions and millions of dollars into our revenue every year, we would certainly be having those conversations about how to keep them here,” she said.
The path forward should be put to a vote, Nurrenbern said.
“It’s up to our county commissioners to put it to a vote of the people. I think voters deserve a voice in this,” she said. “If this is something they want for their region, this is something they should be able to think about and make a decision (on) at the ballot box.”
Nolte said he and other county officials are planning to “open the process up” for more public comment once the team makes a decision.
“I would hate to build up people’s hopes and then not be able to deliver,” Nolte said. “If we should continue forward on this, we need to have as much public input as we possibly can.”
If the bill is passed and signed into law, Nolte said he didn’t think there would be a “terribly long process” to get the authority established and operating. From there, he said, the county would need to figure out what funding a new stadium in the Northland would look like.
He said solid numbers about cost and other factors are needed to know what the best approach could be, but said one option would be a sales tax, which would have to be approved by voters.
“I think it’s certainly doable,” he said. “We need to make sure that we are able to provide (residents) with information that would convince people that this was indeed a benefit to them, but I think there’s a good deal of excitement.”
Nolte said that had the sales tax vote succeeded in Jackson County, “we might not be having this conversation. But here we are.”
Nurrenbern said she’s tried to push back against the idea that Clay County’s efforts are creating a competition between it and its southern neighbor.
“This is simply another option for the teams, (so) that if they choose to move north, we have this in place for them,” she said. “I always wanted to make clear that this wasn’t going to be Clay vs. Jackson. It’s up to the Royals to choose where they want to move their team.”
Nolte said he doesn’t see it as a competition between counties, either.
“We very much look at this in terms of being a team, part of a Missouri solution to retain the teams,” he said. “We’re all just trying to put out the best set of options to keep these institutions in Missouri and to keep that economic engine and those jobs here in Missouri.”
A Kansas stadium solution
As different governments and groups on the Missouri side of the border work to keep the teams in the Show-Me State, the Sunflower State last year made its move to attract the teams, passing a law during an emergency session to enable the use of STAR bonds to help cover the cost of building new stadiums.
STAR bonds — or sales tax and revenue bonds — are used to pay for tourist attractions and are paid off through sales taxes on products sold at those sites and nearby businesses. For a new sports stadium, that could include taxes on tickets, food and merchandise.
The bonds have been marketed as a way to cover upwards of 70% of the cost of a new stadium without diverting taxpayer dollars from the state’s general revenue fund. But they still divert a portion of state revenue that might have otherwise been used to pay for public services.
While the Kansas Department of Commerce said most of the state’s STAR bond-funded projects are expected to be paid off early — including Children’s Mercy Park, home of Sporting KC — a 2021 audit found some projects may need over a century to do so, and several prominent projects have in recent years defaulted on their bonds.
The 2021 audit also found most STAR bond projects in Kansas haven’t drawn much out-of-state tourism, limiting their ability to generate enough tax revenue to pay off their bonds in a timely manner.
Given the potential limitations of Kansas’ plan, Sharp said he believes Missouri legislative leaders and other lawmakers “are just hoping that Kansas can’t or won’t follow through on what they proposed.”
“We’re not taking a position of being aggressive. We’re taking a position of being passive, which I think will ultimately have us end up looking like St. Louis,” he said, referring to the Rams NFL team, which moved from St. Louis to Los Angeles in 2016.
Sharp said that despite his efforts, the teams “won’t speak to us.”
“They haven’t spoken with me. They haven’t spoken with folks in the Democratic caucus. They probably have talked with the (Kansas City) mayor. They probably have talked to the Jackson County (Legislature’s) Chairperson DaRon McGee. They probably have talked to some other folks. But they haven’t talked to anybody in Jeff City about (our) bill,” he said.
Gov. Mike Kehoe and legislative leaders hosted a closed-door meeting in February to discuss the situation with Kansas City and Jackson County officials. The teams were not present at the discussion.
Kehoe — who also met with representatives from the Royals in February — in January told reporters he is “not a fan of just throwing money at stadiums, but I’m a fan of keeping the economic activity that those two teams provide, and we’re going to continue to work and put our best foot forward to make sure they stay.”
This story was originally published by The Beacon, a fellow member of the KC Media Collective.
