Missouri leaders say plan to keep Chiefs, Royals will boost economy. Experts disagree
Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe and supporters of an expansive incentives package to keep the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals in the state pitch the plan as a major economic development opportunity.
Not everyone is so sure.
Again and again, researchers over decades have found that stadiums are not major drivers of economic development.
A 2022 review of 130 studies over 30 years found that nearly all empirical studies found “little to no tangible impacts of sports teams and facilities on local economic activity” and that the level of subsidies typically provided for stadiums “far exceeds any observed economic benefits.”
As Missouri and Kansas compete for the Chiefs and Royals, those who have studied stadium subsidies are especially skeptical of the current bi-state competition because it centers on moving the two teams within the same metro area.
“This seems to be a contagious ailment that lawmakers just seem to have, that somehow if the Royals or Chiefs leave, all consumer spending stops, that people take that money they spend on tickets, parking, hot dogs, beer, they put it into savings and remove it from the economy altogether. It’s ludicrous,” said Geoffrey Propheter, a professor at the University of Colorado-Denver who has studied sports and urban affairs.
The Missouri House passed the funding package in a 108-40 vote after a lengthy debate featuring numerous lawmakers contending the teams play an important economic role. The vote sent the measure to the Senate.
The measure marks Missouri’s most aggressive effort to retain the Chiefs and Royals since Jackson County voters rejected a ⅜-cent sales tax for stadiums in April 2024. The legislation is also Missouri’s first state-level attempt to compete with Kansas’ plan to offer supercharged Sales Tax and Revenue, or STAR, bonds to finance up to 70% of the costs of building one or two stadiums.
The proposed Missouri program offers funding for stadium development by covering annual bond payments up to the amount a team generated in state tax revenue in the year prior to when it took effect.
The program would dedicate funds for bond payments up to the amount of revenue “historically generated by the teams.” In other words, the amount of revenue Missouri would lose if a team leaves the state.
“The state tax revenue that would be utilized for this program is the exact state funding that Missouri would lose out on if the teams left to go to Kansas or anywhere for that matter,” Rep. Chris Brown, a Kansas City Republican from Clay County who put forward the funding proposal on the House floor.
Brown emphasized that Missouri would keep “all the new state revenue generated by the teams” in the future.
The proposal sets a minimum project cost of $500 million to qualify and stadiums must have a seating capacity of more than 30,000. A new Royals stadium would cost more than $1 billion. A new Chiefs stadium could cost up to $3 billion. When the team brought forth a plan to renovate Arrowhead Stadium a year ago, the Chiefs projected that cost at $800 million.
Under the Missouri plan, the total amount of state funding will be capped at 30 years and cannot exceed 50% of the total project costs. The proposal also says the teams’ stadium investments could be eligible for tax credits worth up to $50 million.
The proposal will also require contributions from local governments. The legislation says state officials must be satisfied that there is “sufficient public investment” by local government to support infrastructure or “other needs generated by the project.”
A two-page summary of the proposal circulating among lawmakers touted the “economic impact” of the teams, including thousands of jobs, tens of millions in annual tax revenue, and hundreds of millions in economic activity.
“Obviously, this is an economic boon to Kansas City. We know that it’s an economic driver and it’s also an economic driver to the rest of the state,” Rep. David Tyson Smith, a Columbia Democrat, said during the House debate.
Smith noted that people travel through Columbia on Interstate 70 toward Arrowhead Stadium for Chiefs games, eating at restaurants along the way. Columbia stores feature Chiefs merchandise, he said, and sometimes “things are picked over.”
“I can’t even believe we’re having to debate this,” Smith said.
Governor calls plan ‘major economic development’
Kehoe, a Republican who took office in January, has thrown his weight behind the legislation. He unveiled it to House Republicans during a closed-door meeting on Tuesday, hours before lawmakers passed it.
The governor cast the measure in economic development terms when speaking with reporters. Giving a sense of how Kehoe feels about its scale, he suggested he was willing to call a special session if the measure didn’t pass before the General Assembly’s mandatory adjournment on Friday.
“Anytime the state has seen a major economic development proposal, whether Boeing or GM or Ford, governors of both parties have called special sessions to do that,” Kehoe told reporters. “That, I think, our economic development proposal on the west side of the state is that significant. It’s literally for both teams. It’s well over $3 billion, so it’s huge.”
But the proposal is based on flawed economic assumptions, said John Mozena, president of the Center for Economic Accountability, which opposes government subsidies in economic development.
Promises of economic development often assume that money residents currently spend on tickets, merchandise, concessions and other purchases related to the teams would just disappear if one or both teams moved elsewhere. In reality, Mozena wrote in an email, in the absence of the teams people will spend their money on other forms of entertainment that are taxed.
“Most importantly, the core concept that ‘This is the same amount of revenue the state stands to lose if either team relocates out of state’ is just not true,” Mozena said.
Propheter, the University of Colorado-Denver who watched the House debate online, said supporters of stadium aid would be more intellectually honest if they just said they wanted teams in their area. Government does many things that aren’t economically efficient but are supported by the public, he indicated.
“That would be the only argument that completely neuters all the economic arguments,” Propheter said, “Which is to say, ‘I don’t care how much this costs taxpayers, I don’t care how much risk this puts the general fund at. We think this is cool.’”
The Star’s Kacen Bayless and Sam McDowell contributed reporting
This story was originally published May 14, 2025 at 5:30 AM.
