Ticket fees, demo costs: Missouri lawmaker wants to penalize Chiefs for Kansas move
A Missouri lawmaker has filed a trio of bills aimed at financially penalizing the Kansas City Chiefs in the wake of the team’s planned move to neighboring Kansas.
Together, the three bills, filed by Sen. Nick Schroer, a Defiance Republican, illustrate a retaliatory response from a state legislator after the Chiefs’ announced last month they plan to leave Arrowhead Stadium for Kansas when their lease expires in 2031.
The full bill texts are not yet available online and the Chiefs are not explicitly named in any of the three bill summaries. But the descriptions of each piece of legislation, which would take effect in August if passed, match the circumstances surrounding the team.
The first would require the Chiefs — or any lessee of a public facility that hosts a professional sports team and has a capacity of 60,000 people or more — to pay to demolish that facility if it is left in a condition that is not “reasonably adaptable” for another use.
The second bill would ban any professional sports team from receiving tax credits if it plays in a facility with a capacity of at least 75,000 people. The Chiefs are the only professional team in Missouri that plays in a facility that boasts that capacity.
The third bill from Schroer would require a professional sports team that announces plans to relocate to another state to charge an extra $50 on every ticket sold and an additional 5% charge on all purchases inside the stadium.
Schroer, in an interview on Monday, rejected the notion that his bills sought to penalize the Chiefs. He framed them as a way to recoup costs for taxpayers.
“If we’ve got an entity who’s benefiting from taxpayers, tax credits or whatever it may be, and they’re giving us the middle finger, I think we need to reevaluate doing business with them,” Schroer said. “If they’re leaving a stadium that we’ve had a lot of our tax dollars going toward fixing and promoting, then I think that we need to have a good faith discussion...on how we’re going to address (that) once they leave.”
Schroer added that he also planned to file legislation that would remove the Chiefs’ designation as the official NFL team of Missouri, which would strike down a resolution lawmakers passed in 2019.
A Chiefs spokesperson declined to comment on the legislation on Monday.
Despite the hurt feelings and anxiety in Missouri over the Chiefs, Schroer’s bills will likely face an uphill battle during the upcoming legislative session. Missouri lawmakers return to Jefferson City on Wednesday with a laundry list of priorities that could put the anti-Chiefs bills on the back burner.
House Speaker Jonathan Patterson, a Lee’s Summit Republican, expressed doubt about the bills’ prospects in a phone interview, but said they could be worth a look if they reached the House.
“I get that there’s a lot of emotion around it,” Patterson said. “I think it’s best that we make our laws with clear eyes and do things that are good for our constituents as a whole and…not target certain groups — even though it feels good.”
The top Republican in the Missouri House said that he would rather focus on issues that affect a broad group of people, such as taxes, instead of targeting specific groups.
The three bills also are not the first headline-grabbing action from Schroer, who serves as chair of the Senate’s hard-right Freedom Caucus, which frequently quarrels with GOP leadership.
The St. Louis-area Republican filed a bill last year that would have designated the St. Louis Cardinals as the official MLB team of Missouri and derided the Kansas City Royals as a “subpar professional baseball team.” That bill never gained traction.
Schroer was also among a trio of state lawmakers sued for allegedly sharing social media posts falsely identifying an innocent man, Denton Loudermill, as a shooter at the Chiefs’ Super Bowl rally in 2024. Loudermill died last year.
The lawsuits against Schroer, whose post was the least certain of the three about Loudermill’s involvement and sought clarity about the situation, were later dismissed while lawsuits against the other two then-legislators are currently pending in federal court.
This story was originally published January 6, 2026 at 5:30 AM.
