NFL annual meeting notebook: Chiefs hopeful 2016 schedule won’t be so front-loaded with road games

Here are a few tidbits from recent discussions with Chiefs chairman Clark Hunt and president Mark Donovan from the NFL’s annual meeting:

▪ Both are optimistic that the Chiefs’ regular-season schedule won’t be as road-heavy early on as it was this season.

The Chiefs asked for three road games early last season to avoid conflicts with the American Royal, a fall NASCAR race and a Missouri-BYU college football game, which when combined with the annual conflicts caused by the Royals — their fellow Jackson County tenant — and a “home” game in London, led to the Chiefs playing only three home games before Nov. 29 in 2015.

But this year, they’ve again asked the league’s schedule makers for as many September and October home games as possible, and there’s a belief the lack of a London game this time will allow for a more balanced schedule, even if the Chiefs remain committed to bringing fall events to Arrowhead.

“We’re always looking to bring events to Arrowhead because we believe it’s good for the community, it’s good for the county, it’s good for the Kansas City Chiefs,” Hunt said. “Whether we’ll have as congested a schedule as we did last year, I’m not sure … we also, every year, ask for the league to give us as many games as they can in September and October. It’s something we really work hard for.

“Last year, it didn’t work out that way, in part because of the scheduling complications. So we’re hopeful we’ll have a better schedule, in that regard, this year. And also, we don’t have the London game.”

Donovan said the Chiefs, who played host to the Royal last year, will need to find a new weekend this year, since the Royals are slated to play the first weekend in October this year.

“It’s going to be a challenge finding a date,” Donovan said. “(The American Royal has) been great to us, we’ve been working really well behind the scenes to try to figure that out. We made a bunch of requests to the league to try to work through that.”

The league typically releases each team’s regular-season schedule in mid-to-late April.

▪ Donovan said that one of the benefits of the London game last fall is that it increased the Chiefs’ fan base abroad, according to numbers derived from social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook and the interaction they saw with their online content.

That’s one of the reasons, Donovan said, the Chiefs are willing to go abroad again, though he echoed the words of team chairman Clark Hunt, who told The Star on Monday that if they do so, it will be as the road team this time.

“We think Mexico is in play for us, we think China is in play with us, we think London, again,” Donovan said. “The league is talking about multiple countries in the future, so I think we’ll always be a player in that.”

▪ Donovan said the Chiefs are around the 30th market in the league — and Kansas City has a population of between 1.5 to 2 million in the metro area — but the fan base is much wider. They count 11 million people as members of the “Chiefs Kingdom.”

“We just did the population of the major cities in Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri and Arkansas,” Donovan said. “The Chiefs’ reach is beyond Kansas City metro.

▪ Donovan said Chiefs recently renewed Hy-Vee as a primary sponsor.

“They’re our official grocer partner, and that was a big renewal for us to be able to get that done,” Donovan said. “They’ve been a great partner.”

This story was originally published March 24, 2016 at 6:42 PM with the headline "NFL annual meeting notebook: Chiefs hopeful 2016 schedule won’t be so front-loaded with road games."