What the Chiefs stadium news means for the Royals

It’s official: a team that called the Truman Sports Complex home is moving to a brand new stadium. Interestingly, the first team to declare their intentions to move was not the Kansas City Royals, who have been broadcasting their intentions of building a new stadium for years. Rather, it’s the Kansas City Chiefs who broke the ice first, announcing a new stadium and headquarters project in Wyandotte County, Kansas.

This is obviously big news for Chiefs fans and will take some time to process, but baseball fans have one clear question: what does this news mean for the Royals?

At the moment, the Chiefs stadium does not officially impact the Royals’ decision. But we can sure infer some things from this, so let’s cover a few of them real quick.

Kansas financing might become more difficult

The reason why the Chiefs chose Kansas, as Kansas City Star columnist Sam McDowell put it very well in his most recent column, comes down to one thing and one thing only: money. The state of Kansas will provide the Chiefs organization $1.8 billion, which is the largest ever public subsidy for a U.S. sports stadium project.

Kansas is providing this money through a mechanism called STAR Bonds. These bonds are paid back via sales tax revenue generated from the project’s district. But since the money owed to the Chiefs is so extensive, the district boundaries are looking to be very, very wide.

Kansas isn’t exactly the most populous or the richest state in the union. So does the state also have STAR Bonds available to fund an additional, say, $700 million for the Royals? That’s pretty dicey. It could happen. But where would the district be?

Perhaps because of this crunch, Kansas senate president Ty Masterson did not respond with a particularly forward answer when asked about the Royals. “It’s more complex than it looks on the surface,” he said.

The pressure is on Missouri

With Missouri having just lost an NFL franchise, major leaders in the state do not want to see the Royals go across the border. Kansas City mayor Quinton Lucas made remarks about the news.

One quote pops out very clearly:

“Our unified, hardworking, and exceptional team will continue our strong efforts as we work to retain the Kansas City Royals in a transformational downtown facility.”

It’s not as if Missouri didn’t offer a big incentive package, and had the Chiefs stayed in Missouri they would have been compensated for renovations of Arrowhead. But with the Chiefs gone, one of the obstacles for negotiating with the Royals is now gone.

So what does this all mean?

It is more likely today than it was a week ago that the Royals will stay in Missouri, either downtown somewhere or at the North Kansas City site. Missouri is eager to retain the Royals, while there are serious issues with the Royals’ potential Kansas stadium location as well as the state’s ability to conjure up money to keep the Royals.

With the special Kansas STAR Bond offer expiring by the end of 2025, it’s possible that we’ll know more very soon.