Kansas City regional business leaders don't care whether the Chiefs or the Royals play in Missouri or Kansas as long as they don't leave the metropolitan area.
That was the main message Wednesday for an online presentation featuring top executives from four organizations that have membership straddling the border. The presentation came just days before the teams face a deadline from Kansas on its proposal to build new stadiums for both teams.
"We get this question a lot," said Tim Cowden, president and CEO of the Kansas City Area Development Council. "Does the regional business and civic community have a preference for which side of the state line or which specific location the teams land? No. As long as the teams land within the KC region, we're going to support their decision, full stop."
The presentation focused on how Kansas City competes with other metro areas. At no point during the debates in Kansas or Missouri over public financing for stadiums has either team said it was considering moving out of the region.
Such a move would require the concurrence of other team owners. No city or state other than Missouri and Kansas have made public overtures to the teams.
The sentiment that the state line was the smallest consideration for Kansas City businesses was echoed by the other participants, the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce, which hosted the presentation, the Civic Council of Greater Kansas City and the Greater Kansas City Sports Commission & Foundation.
"The more that we can stand united as one KC, and understand that our competition are those other regions that want the assets we have or are competing to attract what we want to get as well, I think we're going to be stronger and we're going to win," said Joe Reardon, CEO of the Kansas City chamber.
Missouri lawmakers this month approved a plan to finance up to 50% of the cost of new or renovated stadiums, committing almost $1.5 billion in future tax revenue. The current facilities, Arrowhead Stadium and Kauffman Stadium, were opened in the early 1970s and almost all other stadiums built near that time are no longer in use, Reardon noted in the presentation.
Kansas, under a plan approved last year by the Kansas Legislature, is offering to pay up to 70% of the cost of new stadiums if the teams cross the state border.
During the debates in both states, the focus was on winning the "border war".
For Missouri, the loss of either team would mean another major league team leaving the state. St. Louis lost the NFL's Rams in 2015, the football Cardinals in 1987 and the NBA's Hawks in 1968. Kansas City lost Major League Baseball's Athletics in 1967 and the Kings NBA franchise in 1985.
Kansas City is the smallest market that has both an NFL team and a Major League Baseball team.
For Kansas, it would be the first time a team from the NFL or Major League Baseball called the state its home.
"Our competition is not in Missouri or Kansas, it's outside the region," Cowden said. "We need to keep them at bay at arm's length. This is not, in our opinion, about a border war. It truly is about a border solution."
The success of Kansas City sports teams, especially the Chiefs, has raised the national and international profile of the region, said Kathy Nelson of the Greater Kansas City Sports Commission & Foundation and Visit KC.
"They are opening doors to businesses like we never heard," she said.
The Chiefs have played in five of the six most recent Super Bowls. The 2025 game had a national audience of 127 million and international audience estimated at 62 million. The romance between Taylor Swift and Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce has also boosted the city's profile, she said.
The Royals made the playoffs last year for the first time since winning the World Series in 2015. They have a more regional audience, she said, with 80% of game attendees living within 75 miles of downtown Kansas City.
"Nothing else puts us on a global stage like our sports teams," Nelson said. "There's nothing else like this."
This story was originally published by Missouri Independent.
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