Now that Chiefs, Royals have 2 stadium options, here’s what must come next
The Missouri General Assembly has ponied up an offer to keep the Chiefs and Royals in the state, approving a stadium incentives package one year after Kansas passed its own bill to lure the teams a couple dozen miles west.
We now have the particulars from not one but two states.
Your turn, Royals and Chiefs.
A yearlong conversation examining what two border-war states might provide Kansas City’s sports franchises — what truce? — predictably resulted in a pair of lucrative offers. But the conversation must now turn to something on which the execution of any Missouri stadium proposals should hinge:
What are they providing us?
Here’s a good place to start: How about a more crystallized and captivating vision than we received 15 months ago?
The bill approved by the Missouri state legislature should not be used as a blank check, but instead as a blank slate. And the teams would be wise to pounce on the opportunity for a fresh — i.e., different — approach, for distinct reasons.
Well, if they want to stay.
This entire column applies to the contingency that one (or both) organization seizes Missouri’s offer to remain in the state, an important caveat because it’s far from a certainty. Gov. Mike Kehoe’s presumed signature will finalize the state’s offer — which funds up to half of a stadium project — but that will not finalize these two teams’ futures.
They will continue to explore options and negotiate with elected officials in Kansas, or at the very least keep Kansas in the picture for leverage long enough until all funding is in place. The Chiefs referred to the Missouri bill’s passage as “an important piece of the overall effort,” and emphasized work remains, undoubtedly referring to the looming discussion with Jackson County.
If the Chiefs or Royals want to stay in Missouri, the bill requires local funding and therefore would likely require the input of thousands of voices absent from the voting chambers in the state capital over the last two weeks:
Your voices.
That’s the still-outstanding, elephant-in-the-room question: If the teams stay in Missouri, can they come up with a plan that receives majority voter approval? That’s where the guardrails against a blank check reside, and it’s where their futures could ultimately pivot.
They pivoted there once before.
It was 15 months ago now that Jackson County voters turned down a combined measure for the two teams at the ballot box, sending into orbit a bidding war between two states that had previously, seemingly, agreed to not engage in these sorts of business bidding wars.
The lesson derived from that April 2024 election blowout, when a staggering 58% of voters rejected extending a 3/8th-cent sales tax, is not that Jackson County citizens didn’t want the Chiefs and Royals to stay. It’s about what they did want, what they deserved, and what they would demand in yet another try: the fine print.
It was the Royals, in particular, who fell short of the fine print — they didn’t even provide the big, bold headline items. They asked voters to approve a multi-billion dollar proposal light on answers and heavy on confusion.
The Royals announced two site finalists before, scratch that, selecting a third site just months before the vote. Six days before that vote, they still hadn’t secured the exact perimeter of their Crossroads ballpark project, nor had they established an avenue for existing businesses in that district to be made whole.
They failed to specify how the stadium would be funded outside the county tax piece, and precisely how much would come from their own pockets.
Those are the primary components of a stadium project, and if the Royals return to a Missouri ballot, whether in Jackson or Clay County, they should be publicly known components of a stadium project.
The point here isn’t to rehash the past. It’s to outline lessons that ought to drive the future.
The chance for a re-do has presented itself.
The blank slate, if you will.
Exhaustion associated with this topic is real and understandable. There are people intricately involved in these discussions who are exhausted by it.
But I’d push back on the notion that we need fully fledged plans today. The timing isn’t near as important as making the clearest, best plans and then presenting them just as clearly and definitively to prospective voters.
These are two decisions that will affect the city and its citizens for decades to come. Make an informed decision, and then ensure voters are just as informed before they’re asked to make their own decisions.
Plural, by the way, because these will be separate decisions. The teams agreed to forge their own paths — no longer one combined tax — moving forward, regardless of their final projects.
The Chiefs have only considered one Missouri option: a renovated Arrowhead Stadium. That remains true today. If they move ahead in Missouri, it will be with a plan to upgrade Arrowhead Stadium.
They had a far cleaner plan in April 2024 than their Truman Sports Complex neighbors. But their proposed renovations need some, well, renovating. They’ve acknowledged that. That’s their blank slate.
In 2024, though, we at least knew what the Chiefs’ project would (and wouldn’t) entail. We knew its price tag and ownership’s contribution.
The Chiefs have been similarly definitive about their intentions to provide specifics this time, and they’d push forward absent a teammate at the voting booths. Notably, they provided clearer and more details to state legislators over the last two weeks than the Royals did, should they opt for a renovated Arrowhead over a new dome in Kansas. The former would be about one-third the price.
The Royals’ proposal is inherently more complex. It’s a move, yes, but the location remains to be determined. A team lobbyist said Tuesday the Royals are considering multiple options in Missouri, but he wouldn’t offer further details. The team is also analyzing the possibility of leaving for Kansas.
There are full-time analysts to sort through these kinds of things, and I’ve spoken to several of them, but I still believe Kansas Citians did not altogether reject downtown baseball. They demanded a better plan for it, a clearer plan for it.
And they were offended by the teams’ campaign for the tax, constructed around a threat of leaving Jackson County.
Missouri offered the teams a second shot — if they want it.
And if they do, the forthcoming local campaign should refrain from stoking fear in voters about what they could be missing.
It ought to be confident enough to ensure those voters know exactly what it is they’re getting.
This story was originally published June 11, 2025 at 5:20 PM.