Kansas Lawmakers Poised To Lure Kansas City Chiefs From Missouri

A 170-year-old rivalry is flaring up as Kansas lawmakers try to snatch the Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs away from Missouri, even though economists long ago concluded that subsidizing pro sports isn’t worth the cost, John Hanna reported for the Associated Press (AP).

For Kansas officials, the spending would at least leave Missouri and come to Kansas, and one-upping Missouri has its own allure. I Photo: Kansas City Chiefs Facebook

The Kansas Legislature’s top leaders endorsed helping the Chiefs and professional baseball’s Kansas City Royals finance new stadiums in Kansas ahead of a special session set to convene this week.

The plan would authorize state bonds for stadium construction and pay them off with revenues from sports betting, the Kansas Lottery, and new tax dollars generated in and around the new venues.

The state’s border runs through the metropolitan area of about 2.3 million people, and the teams would move only about 25 miles (40 kilometers) west.

Decades of research have concluded that a pro sports franchise doesn’t boost a local economy much, if at all because it mostly captures existing spending from other places in the same community.

But for Kansas officials, the spending would at least leave Missouri and come to Kansas, and one-upping Missouri has its own allure.

“I’ve wanted to see the Chiefs in Kansas my whole life, but I hope we can do it in a way that is enriching for these communities, rather than creating additional burdens for them,” said Kansas state Rep. Jason Probst, a Democrat from central Kansas.

The rivalry between Kansas and Missouri can be traced as far back as the lead-up to the Civil War, before Kansas was even a state. People from Missouri came from the east, hoping in vain to create another slave state like their own. Both sides looted, burned, and killed across the border.