Kansas lawmakers have approved a plan that is intended to attempt to lure away the Super Bowl Champion Kansas City Chiefs as well as the MLB’s Kansas City Royals away from the state of Missouri.
According to the Associated Press, bipartisan legislative supermajorities have OK’d the measure to authorize state bonds to help finance new stadiums and practice facilities for both the Chiefs and the Royals on the Kansas side of the metropolitan area of 2.3 million residents, which is split by the border with the state of Missouri.
Both organizations say that they are looking forward to exploring the state of Kansas as an option as the lease the lease on the Missouri complex with the teams’ side-by-side stadiums runs through January 2031, with both stating that they are already planning for the future.
“We’re excited about what happened here today,” Korb Maxwell, an attorney for the Chiefs said at the Statehouse after the bill cleared the Legislature, per the report. “This is incredibly real.”
“Today was largely, in my opinion, about leverage,” Mayor Quinton Lucas said as he promised to “lay out a good offer” to keep both teams from leaving Missouri “And the teams are in an exceptional leverage position.”
“I think the Chiefs and the Royals are using us” state Rep. Susan Ruiz, a Kansas City-area Democrat said of the development.
“It is amazing to me the speed with which we can solve problems when they’re oriented around wealth, when they’re oriented around business,” state Rep. Jason Probst added.
