The Chiefs may not travel far if they decide to depart Kansas City.
A campaign to persuade the Chiefs to construct a new stadium in Kansas has reportedly begun, according to the Kansas City Star. To be more precise, Ron Ryckman Jr., the former speaker of the Kansas House, is “quietly working” with “unnamed parties” who want to see the Chiefs quickly cross the state line.
The announcement was made today following a disastrous defeat at the polls of a plan to extend the current sales tax in order to finance renovations at Arrowhead Stadium.
Jackson County made mistakes. We’re in the best position for a scoop and score, so there will be a crazy scramble for the ball now, Ryckman told the Star.
(If they do so, is it possible to enact legislation prohibiting the use of poor football puns by attorneys and/or politicians?)
Eighty percent of the proceeds from the legalization of sports betting in Kansas went toward creating a new fund intended to draw professional sports franchises to the state. By 2025, the fund might allegedly have $10 million. (Much more will be required than that.)
Taxpayer funds could be utilized for a stadium in conjunction with other strategies. The trick will be to devise a strategy that doesn’t depend on public voting, since, as we discovered once more last night, the public is unwilling to support sports club owners.
The Chiefs’ Arrowhead Stadium contract expires following the 2030 campaign.
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Following the defeat of a sales tax vote in Jackson County, Missouri, on Tuesday night, which was intended to finance repairs to Arrowhead Stadium, home of the Kansas City Chiefs, Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson took to social media to encourage the team to consider relocating to Dallas, should it make the decision to do so.
Johnson told The Dallas Morning News on Wednesday, We play to win, which is why Dallas was rated the top sports city in the United States.
Our market is large enough, expanding enough, and passionate about football enough to support a second NFL team—especially a franchise (and an owner) with significant roots here, the statement reads.
Johnson’s request is not unexpected.
Since Lamar Hunt established the Chiefs in 1959 as the Dallas Texans, a founding member of the American Football League, the team has a rich history in Dallas. In 1963, Hunt renamed the team the Chiefs and relocated them to Kansas City.
Even if it is still extremely doubtful, a return to the team’s original foundations doesn’t appear wholly implausible because the Hunt family still controls the team.
Johnson could be in favor of adding another NFL club, but Jerry Jones, the owner of the Cowboys, probably isn’t.
Given that the Cowboys are regarded as one of the league’s golden teams and that the team has only won five playoff games since 1995—the last time it won a Super Bowl championship—Jones probably does not want to share the limelight in his hometown with the two-time defending Super Bowl champions.
The kind of value that the game and the NFL receive from having the Dallas Cowboys as one of its marquee teams—and again, logic tells you that the NFL wouldn’t want to water that down—means that you can rest assured that you would not have the NFL supporting another team, Jones told the Dallas Morning News back in June 2022.
