The Kansas City Chiefs’ naming-rights deal for Arrowhead might not be what you think
The Chiefs sold a little part of themselves that they always said they wouldn’t sell, and the local sports columnist is supposed to feel something about that. So why am I sitting here like a real life shrug emoji?
The Chiefs no longer play at Arrowhead Stadium. They play on GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium, and the difference is lots of money for the Chiefs and a reaction from fans ranging from neutral to furious.
The first thought by many is that this is a sort of COVID-19 makeup. That revenues were depressed in 2020, and this is the quickest and simplest way to get that money back. Interestingly, that’s not true.
The potential for naming rights was in the original partnership between the Chiefs and GEHA signed in July 2019, according to a source. That’s before COVID-19 slashed revenues, and before the Chiefs won a Super Bowl championship.
So this isn’t about COVID-19, and it isn’t even necessarily about Patrick Mahomes. This is about the Chiefs adding a revenue stream, and doing it under the most favorable conditions — partnership with a Kansas City-area company with deep roots here, and the stadium is still called Arrowhead.
Some of you will be angry about this. I get that.
Many of you will never say GEHA and Field consecutively. It’ll always be Arrowhead to you, and I get that, too. There is no way to measure something like this, but it’s quite possible that more lifetime memories have been created in that old stadium and the parking lot that surrounds it than anywhere else in Kansas City. Nobody likes their memories sold to the highest corporate bidder.
Teams make it easy for fans to forget they’re rooting for businesses. That’s by design. When the inevitable reminders come, it can feel like a poke in the eye.
Again: I get that.
But the truth is this was inevitable. Clark Hunt is not Lamar. That’s said truthfully, not maliciously. Clark thinks differently than his father did. Lamar helped start a football league when everyone told him he was crazy (he knew he was right), and he helped start a soccer league when everyone told him he’d lose a bunch of money (he knew they were right).
Lamar was an entrepreneur, a billionaire, but still somehow an everyman. Clark cut his teeth at Goldman Sachs. He is comfortable negotiating contracts and making sure the business stays modern. Both approaches have their purposes, their strengths, their weaknesses.
But only one was always going to pair a corporation’s name with the stadium.
There is no reason for fans to like this development. The Chiefs did not become a better football team with the announcement. They did not become more fun, more accessible, more anything other than rich.
The Chiefs are making a business decision, and they know their fans will hate it. They’re hoping time and Mahomes and the fact that it’s still called Arrowhead Stadium will be enough to avoid the hottest vitriol.
Sports are full of corporate stadiums. Kauffman Stadium is one of just eight in Major League Baseball without a corporate name. In the NFL, just four stadiums lack some sort of corporate name now, while the stadiums in New Orleans and Atlanta are named after the same car company.
We can scream at the clouds or live our lives. This is the way the world works.
Nobody needs to be happy for the Hunt family’s unnecessary new revenue stream, but it’s also well within what Clark and virtually all other NFL owners have shown themselves to be about.
One interesting part of the deal is that it expires along with the Chiefs’ and Royals’ lease at the Truman Sports Complex in April 2031.
Legally, that makes sense, and deals like this typically include an exclusive negotiating window to extend the partnership. But it also aligns with my long-held theory that’s been subtly reinforced from inside the organization about the Chiefs’ long-term dream scenario.
A reminder, and obviously much of this is out of the Chiefs’ control: If the Royals move downtown after the current lease — and the Royals are working toward this — the Chiefs would have enormous options.
They could build a new and modernized stadium where Kauffman now sits, and convert Arrowhead (we won’t say GEHA much either) into some sort of revenue-generating commercial development.
That’s the direction many NFL teams have taken, with examples including the Cowboys, Patriots, Cardinals and the stadium shared by the Chargers and Rams.
At the very least the Chiefs would have more space and time to build a new stadium without the logistical challenges of professional games held in the sports complex 10 months out of the year.
Either way, the Chiefs selling the naming rights now while leaving themselves the opportunity to renegotiate while leveraging expanded revenue streams and exposure opportunities in 10 years. And doesn’t that sound like exactly the kind of thing Clark Hunt would want to do?
This isn’t the fun part of sports, but it is a mostly inevitable part of sports. The Chiefs resisted longer than most, but at some point virtually all teams disappoint their fans this way.
At least it’s a local company, and part of the Chiefs’ bet here is that nobody will care what the field is called when Mahomes converts third and 15. He really is the NFL’s ultimate force multiplier.