Royals reportedly set to leave KC to accept stadium offer from [citation needed]

On that promised morning, we will wake and greet the dawn… Oh, sorry, distracted by other things this morning, let’s get on with the day’s other big news, which is that the Kansas City Royals are absolutely definitely moving out of Kansas City, according to some very agitated tweets from a city councilmember and a sports radio guy:

that we might lose Royals. I hear now that Chiefs are also upset with Jackson County and might look at other sites. How did we get here? This should have been a no brainer. Heartbroken if either franchise leaves.

— Kevin O’Neill KCMO (@KOneillkcmo) November 29, 2023

Just spoke to a stadium insider I am told its looking more & more likely that both the Royals & Chiefs will be leaving Jackson County. I am told BOTH teams are beyond frustrated w the county at this time. "We're FUC#ED" is the quote I was given. We're=Jackson County @610SportsKC

— Bob Fescoe (@bobfescoe) November 29, 2023

If that’s what people are “hearing” from “stadium insiders,” then it must be true! Surely it couldn’t be an attempt by Royals owner John Sherman to shake loose more stadium money from Jackson County, no one would do a thing like that!

The “Kansas is trying to steal the Royals from Kansas City!!1!” meme has emerged seemingly out of thin air in the last week, with first another city councilmember, Manny Abarca, warning that there were “serious considerations” for such a move, and now the rest of Sherman Stan Twitter chiming in. One theory is that Sherman, who initially said he would pick a stadium site in September before noting he never said September of which year, is upset that Jackson County isn’t more excited about extending a sales tax surcharge that’s funding upgrades to the Royals’ current stadium to provide $500 million or more toward a new one. It’s also possible the Royals owner saw the Election Day results of a referendum for an unrelated sales tax hike (it lost, big time) as well as prospects for his backup site in Clay County (where polls show a sales tax hike for a stadium has little support) and figured somebody needed to create some leverage. Either way, though, there’s no evidence of an actual offer from Kansas or Wyandotte County, or of how either the state or county would come up with the money for one, but then, monsters are always scarier until you actually see them.

On top of this, even if the Kansas ghost stadium offer exists, it’s still an open question as to whether the Royals moving across state lines would genuinely leave Kansas City fuc#ed. The team already plays outside of downtown, farther away than the state line, so it’s not like fans would necessarily have to make a longer trip to games. And as for the economic benefits of keeping the team, all evidence is that they’d be minimal (sales and income taxes would move across state lines, but spending would still stay in the same regional economy), while Jackson County would be off the hook for a billion dollars or so in tax money, which would be a reasonable tradeoff, as Twitter’s favorite economist notes:

Funny thing is that most folks probably don't care much where in the KC metro area the Royals play, but they would all prefer to keep their taxes lower. Pitting local jurisdictions against each other is a great way to upset a large share of your fanbase. https://t.co/XFMBz3RXyA

— J.C. Bradbury (@jc_bradbury) November 30, 2023

Sherman, needless to say, is likely less worried about upsetting his fan base than about maximizing his subsidy haul, and if pitting two vaportecture stadiums against each other didn’t do the trick, the next step is to make it three. Or four. What’s that I hear about Greensboro?

Meanwhile, Jackson County officials have finally revealed what’s up with that “billion-dollar error” that Abarca previously claimed existed in projections of a $6.4 billion stadium cost, explaining that, yes, they really meant $5.1 billion, but “a formula error” inflated the final number. This would be big news, except that the $6.4 billion figure was nonsense to begin with because it was totaling spending over the next 40 years as if it were happening now. Without knowing when in the future the additional billion dollars in tax losses that somebody fat-fingered into Excel were supposed to take place, it’s impossible to know exactly what the new projected public cost would be; but given that the last real guesstimate was “around $1 billion or more,” that’s still a reasonable enough fuzzy number to go by. And truly, what’s a billion-dollars-ish between friends when the Kansas threat is looming? Bidding against yourself is great fun, everybody should try it!