A 170-year-old rivalry is flaring up again as Kansas lawmakers try to the Super Bowl winner Kansas City Chiefs are withdrawing from Missouri, although economists have long since concluded that subsidizing professional sports is not worth the cost.
Kansas lawmakers endorsed support for the Chiefs and Kansas City Royals in professional baseball Financing new stadiums in Kansas ahead of a special session scheduled for Tuesday. The plan calls for approving state bonds for stadium construction and paying them back with revenue from sports betting, the Kansas Lottery and additional tax revenue from the new venues and their surrounding areas.
The border between the two states runs through the metropolitan area with about 2.3 million inhabitants, and the teams would only move about 40 kilometers to the west.
Decades of research have found that a professional sports franchise doesn’t boost the local economy much, if at all, because it mostly absorbs existing spending from other places in the same community. But for Kansas officials, at least the spending would be leaving Missouri and coming to Kansas, and outdoing Missouri has its own appeal.
“I’ve wanted to see the Chiefs in Kansas all my life, but I hope we can do it in a way that is an asset to these communities rather than an additional burden,” said state Rep. Jason Probst, a Democrat from central Kansas.
The rivalry between Kansas and Missouri dates back to before the Civil War, before Kansas was even a state. The people of Missouri came from the east, in the vain hope of creating another slave state as their own. Both sides looted, burned and killed across the border.
There was also a century-long athletic rivalry between the University of Kansas and the University of Missouri. And for years, the two states burned hundreds of millions of dollars to lure companies to one side or the other of the border in search of jobs. They called a uncertain ceasefire in 2019.
Missouri authorities promise to fight just as hard to keep the Royals and Chiefs – and not just because they see them as economic assets.
“They are a source of great pride,” said Missouri State Representative John Pattersona Republican from suburban Kansas City who is expected to become the next speaker of the state House of Representatives.
Kansas lawmakers see Chiefs and Royals in the game because the voters on the Missouri side rejected in April to extend a local sales tax to pay for the maintenance of their adjacent stadiums. Lawmakers also argue that failure to act poses a risk that one or both teams will leave the Kansas City area, though economists are skeptical that that danger is real.
While the lease for the stadium complex runs through January 2031, Kansas officials argue that teams need to make decisions soon so that new or renovated stadiums can be ready by then. They also promise the Chiefs a stadium with a dome or retractable roof that can host Super Bowls, college basketball Final Fours and large indoor concerts.
“You have that capital and all the businesses that are moving there or being established there as a result,” said Sean Tarwater, a Republican from the Kansas City suburbs and one of the leaders of the relocation effort. “You’re going to take commerce out of that area every day.”
About 60% of the region’s population lives in Missouri, but the Kansas portion is growing faster.
Despite legislative pressure in Kansas, Missouri lawmakers are in no hurry to propose alternatives. Missouri Republican Gov. Mike Parson told reporters Thursday that his state “will not easily give in,” but added, “We’re only in the first quarter” of the campaign.
Both states will hold primaries on August 3, with most of the state House seats up for election this year. The April vote on the local stadium tax in Missouri suggested that subsidizing professional sports teams could be a political loss-maker in that state, especially among conservative-leaning Republican voters.
“In Missouri, the Republican Party used to be led by a business wing that might be for these kinds of things, but in the Trump era, that’s no longer the case,” says David Kimball, a political scientist at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. “The more conservative, Trump-oriented wing is not a big proponent of spending taxpayer money on anything.”
Republicans in Kansas are under pressure from the right to prevent the state from determining economic winners and losers. Democrat Probst fears that the government will be used to “make rich people even richer,” i.e. the team owners.
Economists have been studying professional sports teams and stadium subsidies since at least the 1980s. JC Bradbury, an economics and finance professor at Kennesaw State University in Georgia, said studies have shown that stadium subsidies are “a terrible conduit for economic growth.”
While supporters of the Kansas effort cited a report suggesting large, positive economic impacts, Bradbury said “false” reports are a staple of stadium campaigns.
“Stadiums are a bad public investment, and I would say there is almost unanimous agreement on that,” says Bradbury, who has reviewed and conducted studies himself.
Still, more than 30 lobbyists have registered to push Kansas lawmakers for a plan to fund the stadium, and the CEO of the Kansas Chamber of Commerce called it a “once in a lifetime opportunity” to lure the Chiefs.
Not only have the Chiefs won three Super Bowl titles in five years, but they also have a particularly strong fan base that has grown even further thanks to the performances of tight end Travis Kelce. romance with pop star Taylor Swift.
The National Football League is attractive to host cities because the franchises are worth billions and wealthy owners and prominent players are in the media spotlight, says Judith Grant Long, associate professor of sports management and urban planning at the University of Michigan and director of the University’s Center for Sports Venues.
“All of these factors combine to create a potent cocktail for politicians, local officials and local business people hoping to capitalize on that influence,” she said.