KC Chiefs and Royals have our hearts. But they don’t need public money for stadiums | Opinion
All eyes this weekend will be on Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas to watch the Kansas City Chiefs play, uh, some other team.
Allegiant Stadium was built using public subsidies. That should be no surprise, as cities all over the country fall over themselves to give money to billionaire team owners. According to one analysis:
“The $750 million put toward the project by government makes up only a portion of the stadium’s nearly $2 billion price tag. The overall cost to the region is far greater. The total amount paid to service that debt will be roughly $1.3 billion over its 30-year term, and the Raiders received massive additional tax abatements and subsidies equal to roughly half a million dollars per year as part of their lease agreement.”
This is what we face in Kansas City as the Royals push to extend a sales tax to pay for their new stadium, potentially costing taxpayers between $4.4 billion and $6.4 billion. And Kansas City isn’t alone. As John Mozena of the Center for Economic Accountability wrote in National Review, “Other deals are under way, or at least under discussion, in St. Petersburg, Orlando, Milwaukee, Chicago, Indianapolis, New York City, Philadelphia, Memphis, San Antonio, St. Paul, Phoenix and Jacksonville.”
Researchers generally agree these deals don’t live up to their promises made to taxpayers. A 2022 paper in the Journal of Economic Surveys concluded, “nearly all empirical studies find little to no tangible impacts of sports teams and facilities on local economic activity, and the level of venue subsidies typically provided far exceeds any observed economic benefits.”
The Berkeley Economic Review, a Journal of the University of California, Berkeley, goes further in a 2019 study: “The inescapable truth is that the economic impact of these projects on their communities is minimal, while they can be an obstacle to real development in local neighborhoods.”
That last part is important. Any deal the Royals work out would almost certainly go beyond the imposition of a new, regressive sales tax. Look for property tax abatements and tax increment financing also to be part of the mix, meaning that any sales or income tax generated at the new park would be returned to owners to offset the cost of construction. (This includes the earning taxes levied on visiting teams.) Tax revenue otherwise heading to our schools, libraries, mental health services, public safety and infrastructure would be diverted back to John Sherman, the billionaire owner of the Royals.
If he gets his way, Jackson County residents will be taxed more and get less.
Team owners don’t need these incentives. Exhibit A: Stan Kroenke, who moved the Rams from St. Louis to Los Angeles in 2016, walked away from at least $400 million in subsidies offered to him by the city of St. Louis and the state of Missouri. Instead, he moved to Los Angeles where he was offered exactly zero direct public subsidies. Kroenke thought Los Angeles was a better market, and he was probably right.
Kroenke invested $1.6 billion of his own money to build the $5.5 billion SoFi Stadium. His own money! It’s likely a better facility than anything he would have built in St. Louis — exactly because his own money was on the line.
Mark Davis, the billionaire who owns the Las Vegas Raiders, could have built Allegiant Stadium without public money. So can John Sherman. So can all of them.
Chiefs and the Royals players and management deserve our admiration. They have won our hearts. They get plenty of our money through ticket and merchandise sales and television contracts. We ought not begrudge them the millions they earn.
But they don’t also need our tax dollars.
Patrick Tuohey is co-founder of Better Cities Project, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit focused on municipal policy solutions, and a senior fellow at the Show-Me Institute, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to Missouri state policy work.
