At last word last night, the Kansas legislature was set to vote on a bill to provide $2-3 billion in sales tax kickbacks toward potentially two new stadiums for the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals. How did that work out?
Renderings from Manica Architecture show a potential domed-stadium for the Kansas City Chiefs
Thanks, don’t really want to see renderings right now. Did the bill pass or not?
Stadium architect shares renderings hoping to bring Chiefs to KCK
The funding bill. What happened to the funding bill?
Here’s what a Chiefs stadium in Kansas could look like, and some necessary context
Didn’t anybody go to the last night of the legislative session? ESPN, whatcha got?
An effort to help the Super Bowl champion Chiefs and the Royals finance new stadiums in the state fizzled over concerns about how it might look to taxpayers.
Okay then!
The failed bill was what’s called in Kansas a STAR bond, but is broadly known as a STIF, or sales tax increment financing. The idea would be that all new sales tax revenue from in and around each stadium would be kicked back to pay the teams’ construction costs. Crucially, the state of Kansas can issue STAR bonds without a public referendum, so the legislature could have approved it without any risk of it failing at the ballot box like happened across the border in Jackson County, Missouri.
How would the math have worked out on raising $2-3 billion just from new sales tax revenues? Really, really badly, according to University of Colorado Denver economist Geoffrey Propheter:
1/n Assume KS gives $1.5b for Royals+$2b for Chiefs+$500m for infra, annual DS is ~$250m @ 4.5%. In order for the SUT to fully cover DS strictly from within-stadium activity, each Royals fan (inc kids) must spend ~$700 per season on TAXABLE stuff; each Chiefs fan, ~$2,100.
— Geoffrey Propheter (@gfpropheter) April 30, 2024
Expanding all those abbreviations: If Kansas spent $4 billion on stadiums including infrastructure, the state’s annual debt service on bonds with a 4.5% interest rate would be $250 million a year. For the state’s sales and use tax to cover those debt payments, each and every Royals fan who showed up in a given year would have to spend $700 on taxable goods; each Chiefs fan, because they sell fewer tickets per year, would have to spend $2,100. And, Propheter notes, that might not even include tickets, since there’s been no indication of whether sports tickets would be exempted from the sales tax, or other lease details like whether the teams would pay rent.
But anyway, the legislature has now adjourned for the year without voting on the stadium bill, so we don’t have to worry about — oh, what now?
Lawmakers expect [Democratic Gov. Laura] Kelly to call a special session of the Legislature to try to get lawmakers to pass a tax plan that she will accept — and they could consider the stadium financing proposal then.
“We just need a little time on it. We’ll be OK,” said Senate President Ty Masterson, a Wichita Republican. “I mean, we’re serious about trying to incentivize the Chiefs to come our direction.”
Masterson later said he didn’t call for a vote on the bill because of “concern” about not passing income, sales, and property tax cuts for Kansas residents before “what appears to be corporate welfare,” showing an admirable ability to say the quiet part loud.
So, we know nothing just yet, other than that a plan to funnel as much as $3 billion to Chiefs and Royals stadiums remains on the table, or in legislators’ pockets, or somewhere in the state halls of power. Fine, let’s look at some renderings:
I mean, that looks like a football stadium, yes. Not sure why everyone in the stadium thinks that they need to put the flashes on for their phones while taking pictures of a game hundreds of feet away in broad daylight under a translucent roof, but then, this is a rendering drawn by an architect not connected in any way with the Chiefs, so it means even less than the usual vaportecture. Hey, maybe we could adapt that term for bills that haven’t been voted on and don’t have real details: vaporslation? Gotta workshop that to be ready for the Kansas special session.
Do not stop at go
Do not collect $200 million
Go directly to Greensboro
Enjoy.
Sorry, you can’t go directly from Kansas City to Greensboro, enjoy your connection in Atlanta. Since the “Piedmont Triad International Airport” only handles a third the passengers as Omaha, I’m sure Greensboro will make a profitable home for the Chiefs and Royals. Better yet, get Nebraska involved in your attempted bidding war!
STIF is a much more accurate description than TIF, for tax increment financing.
The acronym aside, they’re different: TIF is for property taxes, STIF is for sales taxes.
Anyone trying to pass a STIF should think about rebranding it.
Its very telling that everything from the proposed renderings to the statement by the Senator is solely focused upon the Chiefs, with the Royals being kinda somewhat also mentioned. Wondering if they take the time to massage this and work a deal specifically for just the Chiefs and this new stadium while leaving the Royals to fend for themselves on the Missouri side.
All the games indoors in perfect conditions takes a lot of the fun out of watching NFL games. The variability of weather like wind, rain and snow makes the action more interesting. These domes are just too clinical without being outdoors. Now the Browns, Bears, Titans and Chiefs are all pushing for a dome or are having one built.
Don’t worry. In 20 years that will be the reason to demand a new, open air stadium. Already heard those arguments 15 years ago with the St. Louis version of the Rams. At first, the Ed Dome was “the greatest show on turf, loudest stadium in the league,” but when the owner wanted to move, “it was dank and depressing.” (The team was even more dank and depressing.)
looks like the Texans and Raiders’ stadiums had a kid
Another sterile, boring, generic stadium? YAWN
Seems like the Chiefs & Royals owners got the wrong end of the STIF…
In other news & you’re just loaded with steamy greedy owner grits to write it up yet, the fact that Fisher has hired a “head-hunting” company to find a moron for minority partnership (@ only $500m?!? What a deal!) I’m hoping someone will advise him how his cheapness & frugality is being hampered by his pee-ing contest with city of Oakland. How does it look that he’s going to essentially reject a decent cut of contractual RSN $ just to move his 4-A team to a minor league park, while begging someone to join his gypsy band of carpetbagging party?
What’s even more upsetting about this is how hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent in the past 8 years to upgrade Arrowhead stadium. At least the Bills had the decency to neglect Highmark Stadium before holding their hand out.
If a city did a deal like this and, predictably, couldn’t pay off the bonds with the designated tax revenue, what would happen? I don’t know much about bonds.
There would have to be a backstop to the designated tax money, or else nobody will buy the bonds. I’m pretty sure the STAR legislation says the state covers any shortfall from its general fund.
I hope these legislators, unlike the ones in Nevada, understand all of that.
Are these vaportecture companies even bothering to hire actual people to draw these bullshit stadium concepts anymore? They are all becoming increasingly generic and low-rez. I’m pretty sure at this point they just had some intern type “domed Chiefs stadium” into an AI art generator and then printed whatever came out.