Mayor Quinton Lucas makes statement over Chiefs, Royals' potential move out of Kansas City
The NFL's Kansas City Chiefs and MLB's Kansas City Royals will not be leaving Missouri in the foreseeable future.
Speculation has been rife about whether the defending back-to-back Super Bowl champions will change homes amidst a standoff with local governments regarding a new stadium. But on Monday, Kansas City, Missouri Mayor Quinton Lucas was quick to dismiss it all on X/Twitter, saying that the Chiefs and Royals, who play in the same sports complex, will stay put:
Two months ago, Kansas Governor Laura Kelly passed state legislature that empowered the state to potentially lure both teams across the border. Lucas responded at the time (via ESPN.com):
"It's fairly clearly about how you poach."
In a related development, the Jackson County legislature voted 5-4 against approving a capital improvements sales tax on Monday. Legislator Manny Abarca claimed the proposal was intended to keep the Chiefs in Jackson County (via kmbc.com):
“I think people are going to start to realize, this is our last shot here for the Chiefs. There’s not really another opportunity for us if we lose a second vote.”
Kansas-Missouri war for Chiefs, Royals stadiums could be 'wildly destructive', per analyst
The war for the Chiefs and Royals between the two states that the Kansas City area sits on may prove to be one of the costliest in sports business history. At least, that is what an analyst Victor Matheson, a professor of economics at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts with research experience in stadium subsidies said. He told the Des Moines Register earlier this month:
“This is wildly destructive. This is in some ways significantly worse than intercity competition because you’re just spending billions of dollars to just move economic activity from one point in the metro area to another," Matheson said.
“If there’s not a credible threat to relocate. the only way to really get the money out of people’s hands is to play localities against one another," he added.
Such intracity competition is not limited to Kansas City. Currently, New Jersey state officials are currently speaking with Josh Harris about moving the NBA's Philadelphia 76ers to the cross-border suburb of Camden, where the team's training and practice facilities are located.
The NFL's Washington Commanders, Harris' other franchise, have also held talks with the District of Columbia and the state of Virginia about a replacement for their stadium Commanders Field in Landover, Maryland.