Yeah - the Chiefs’ current dynasty status and success doesn’t really factor into this. They’ve always been a very successful franchise when it comes to getting fans in the stadium, even in down years. 2011 and 2012 were the last time they were last in their division - they still ranked 8th and 16th in attendance those years.
Public funding of stadiums is an absolute racket, and there isn’t a single study that I’ve seen that shows the public coming out ahead. I like that they’re going to lean into taxing sports gambling to fund a portion of this, as well as STAR bonds from the retail area around it - but it’s tough to see how that adds up to $4 billion.
See also: The “Washington” NFL team and their successive locations in DC and Maryland and the ever-floated alternatives of new venues in DC, Maryand or Northern Virginia.
Then of course for another parallel to the Chiefs and Bears there’s the “New York” NFL teams, playing at Meadowlands in New Jersey for the last 40+ years.
Yes, part of the issue with some of these stadium developments is the repeated promise that they will be drivers of business developments around their location. However that is easier said than done and ISTM it’s likely to be more succesful where you’re in an in-town location that was already hungry for redevelopment and just needed a secure “anchor” project so investors would not feel they were taking a leap into the void (see: DC Nationals Park) than if you expect it to arise on a build-it-and-they-will-come basis (and you surround your stadium with parking lots the size of a suburb so it’s integrated with nothing).
A recent literature review surveyed the past 50 years of stadium construction. The authors found that the promised tangible economic benefits—economic growth, income growth, wage growth, employment growth, and higher tax revenues—do not occur the way that sports teams claim. Often, the only economic benefits occur near the stadium—and fall far short of expectations. State and city governments are subsidizing development within a single neighborhood, with no tangible benefits for the rest of the city or state.
And…
The empirical evidence shows repeatedly that stadium subsidies fail to generate new tax revenue and new jobs or attract new businesses. While attending a sporting event or a concert in a new, publicly subsidized venue might benefit fans of the team or those who attend the event, those subsidies shift spending that would have occurred in other parts of the city or state in the absence of a new sports stadium or arena.
While not fun to see your team leave, the residents of Missouri probably dodged a bullet here, and Chiefs fans still get a new stadium. The only losers here are probably the residents of Kansas.
In this case it shifts to a different city and state. That’s the whole point of Kansas doing this. I’m sure it’s still a screw job but this argument doesn’t apply.
If St. Louis still had an NFL team (they’ve lost both the Cardinals and the Rams in the past 40 years), I’d wonder if some Missouri-based Chiefs fans would switch loyalties out of spite.
Is there any possibility of it becoming the home field for the University of Missouri-Kansas City or another school? I suspect not and the fact that these stadiums are unsustainable without an NFL tenant doesn’t seem to justify them. And even with an NFL tenant, they’re used less than ten days a year.
It doesn’t look like UMKC has a football team, though they do have men’s and women’s soccer teams. But, beyond that, the only two “Division I FBS” programs (the highest level in NCAA football) in the state of Missouri are the University of Missouri and Missouri State University, which are both located over 100 miles away from Arrowhead.
Even if there are smaller college football programs closer to Kansas City, there’s probably not much interest for them in playing their home games in a 76,000 seat stadium which would be 80% empty for them.
I’m not sure the state line has much economic significance, here. In an inter-state metropolitan area like the Kansas Cities, a business in one state can easily be staffed by workers who live in another, and their customers can likewise come from either state. I mean, it’d matter for the first-order tax dollars, but the higher orders won’t care and are probably much more important than the first order.
That’s true - but it’s also true that if the stadium is in Kansas, then Kansas gets any sales tax from tickets and other purchases. Kansas will get income tax from the players and other stadium employees , no matter where they live.
we live in a mid-sized midwestern city with an NFL franchise. The team threatened to move if the county did not build a new stadium for them. After much hand-wringing we ponied up the $1B to build it. I was not in favor whereas my son was.
I asked him why he supported what I saw as extortion. Came this answer:..”Prestige. without the team we are just …I dunno,…. Louisville”
Attendance is LESS important to an NFL team than it is in basically any other major pro sport anyway. Even terrible attendance will usually run around 75% of capacity and with some care, you could run a profit with an NFL team without selling any tickets at all.
The NFL is also different in that, unlike baseball, basketball or hockey teams, the location of the stadium isn’t terribly important. In the other major sports, having a location downtown or easily accessible from it is a big moneymaker. Poorly located stadia can be a huge drag. The Rays have long been damaged by the terrible location they’re at, the Ottawa Senators have lost a lot of sales to the awful decision to be way out west of town, and the Oakland Coliseum, ew for baseball.
NFL teams, however, only host 7-10 games a year, not counting preseason, so they aren’t asking fans to travel to the games very often, and it doesn’t seem to really matter where they are.
Don’t forget, St. Louis sued the Rams for lying about the team’s plans to move and got $790 million from them. A well-crafted lawsuit might just pay for the tear down.
The closest major college football program to KC is the University of Kansas in Lawrence, about 40 miles form KC. The Universities of Kansas and Missouri play their rivalry game there (much like Oklahoma and Texas playing in Dallas), but neither seem interested in moving.
And KU is in the process of major renovations of their on-campus stadium. They played some home games at Arrowhead in 2024, due to the renovation project.
The important thing for fans to realize, is that (except for the GB Packers) “your team” isn’t. It belongs to an owner, and the owner will take that team wherever he gets the best deal.
The issue with city names is that as soon as the stadium is built, if not before, the stadium name is sold.
True, but we aren’t – yet – to the point where the teams are named “the ExxonMobil Cowboys,” the “Oracle 49ers,” the “Microsoft Seahawks,” etc. City/state names are still affixed to the teams themselves. and it’s hosting a team (not just having a stadium) where any perceived prestige lies.
I was at AT&T Stadium in Arlington last week for a high school championship game. There sure seemed to be a lot of economic activity in the area of the stadium, though I don’t know if the presence of an enormous stadium made much of a difference. Given that the two teams competing in the game I was in town for were not from the Metroplex, it seems to me that area hotels and restaurants might have benefitted from this and the other championship games that week.