Sports
Next Stop Kansas For The Kansas City Chiefs Football Team
The team will leave Missouri and make a 23-mile trek to Kansas.
The National Football League’s Kansas City Chiefs’ owner Clark Hunt has won the stadium game and will be taking his business from Missouri to Kansas, a move of about 23 miles. Hunt will build a stadium-village around the Kansas City, Kansas area by 2031. Hunt’s business will open offices and a training site also in Kansas. Kansas Governor Laura Kelly claimed the Chiefs business move can bring an economic impact of more than $4.4 billion to the state. Kansas is putting up a lot of money. State residents may not get much of a return on their investment because of the economic gadgets that can be used to pay off stadium-village debts. Hunt’s journey to Kansas started on April 2nd, 2024 when Jackson County, Missouri voters said no to extending a sales tax that would have been used to renovate Clark’s football venue and build Major League Baseball’s Kansas City Royals owner John Sherman a downtown Kansas City baseball stadium.
Kansas lawmakers seized an opportunity and approved a proposal that would see STAR bonds used to help pay 75% of the cost of building two stadiums in Kansas. Additionally, sports gambling and lottery gaming and sales tax revenue from businesses in the stadium development districts would cover bond debt. Another source of revenue to pay off the debt would come from a liquor tax. Kansas lawmakers could use a mechanism that would allow up to 100% of sales tax revenue on alcoholic liquor sales within a stadium district to pay off bonds for the structures. Missouri politicians countered with a proposal to pay up to 50 percent of the construction costs of two venues in an attempt to keep the baseball and football businesses in the state. Missouri and Kansas politicians are now going to woo Sherman to get a stadium built for his baseball business.
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Laura Kelly and Clark Hunt