Kansas City to OK money for potential Chiefs Super Bowl celebration, won’t specify changes
A Kansas City Council committee recommended on Tuesday that taxpayers pay the Greater Kansas City Sports Commission and Foundation up to $905,000 in support of a victory celebration next week, if the Chiefs win a third straight Super Bowl on Sunday.
But city officials are still reluctant to discuss how that celebration might differ from past ones after last year’s rally at Union Station was marred by gunfire that left one woman dead and more than 20 people wounded.
The full council is expected to approve the expenditure at its regular weekly meeting on Thursday. That amount is $70,000 less than the city agreed to spend for last year’s Chiefs Kingdom Championship Parade. But taxpayer support is also likely to come from Jackson County and the Jackson County Sports Complex Authority, if both kick in as they have done in support of past Super Bowl victory celebrations.
Between them, the county and sports authority contributed $125,000 last year. Only rarely has the sports commission provided details on other funding for past events. An exception was when it was revealed that the 2023 parade and rally had a $3.5 million budget, which included private contributions.
The sports commission did not immediately respond to The Star’s emails requesting comment on this year’s financial arrangements.
The council finance committee advanced this year’s proposed appropriation after a half-hour executive session at City Hall. To justify having a private discussion during a public meeting, Councilman Crispin Rea read language from a Missouri law that authorizes closed-door sessions to discuss security matters.
Specificially: “to discuss operational guidelines, policies and specific response plans developed, adopted or maintained by any public agency responsible for law enforcement, public safety first response or public health for use in responding to preventing any critical incident which has the potential to endanger individual or public safety or health.”
After each of the Chiefs’ three Super Bowl victories since 2020, a parade rolled through downtown, north to south on Grand Boulevard, followed by a large rally outside Union Station.
As The Star first reported last month, city officials have been considering changes this year to limit the potential for a repeat of the violence at the end of that year’s event.
One option that has been discussed by police and city officials was to possibly do away with the mass rally in favor of a smaller, ticketed event before the start of the parade. But officials have been reluctant to discuss those options publicly.
When the finance committee reconvened in public session on Tuesday, Mayor Quinton Lucas volunteered no clues on whether this year’s celebration might be organized differently. All Lucas would say Tuesday is that “full information on the parade, as it has been done in years past, and celebration would come on immediately following the Super Bowl itself.”
Even the funding ordinance keeps it vague. It refers only to a “2025 Kansas City Chiefs Postseason Championship Celebration” and make no reference to either a parade or rally. Lucas has been consistent for a month, however, in his insistence that there will be a parade if the Chiefs threepeat.
This story was originally published February 4, 2025 at 4:18 PM.
