By Anna Kaminski, Kansas Reflector
TOPEKA — Kansas has been quietly building a pot of more than $26 million that can be used for attracting professional sports teams to the state, giving the state an edge in its “border war” with Missouri.
Totaling more than $26.2 million and counting, those funds are for the Attracting Professional Sports to Kansas Fund, which can be used to woo any professional sports team, including the Missouri-based Kansas City Chiefs or the Kansas City Royals, to Kansas.
For years, Kansas has been trying to sway the region’s NFL and MLB teams to cross the border. Lawmakers in both states, motivated by pride and potential revenue, have lobbed tax incentives, construction fund packages and seemingly arbitrary decision deadlines at the teams.
The addition of millions of dollars to cover costs that haven’t already been bundled in other proposed deals bolsters Kansas’ case, especially after Missouri lawmakers approved a stadium incentives package earlier this year. In July, Kansas lawmakers approved a deadline extension until the end of the year for the Chiefs and the Royals to accept hundreds of millions of dollars in stadium incentives.
At a recent legislative hearing, Sen. Mike Thompson, a Shawnee Republican, examined how Kansas has amassed millions for professional sports teams without much attention.
“If you read that statute very carefully, it draws some questions,” he said.
The law says the fund can be used to pay the principal or interest costs on any state or municipal bonds, “which shall include any such financing structured as pay-as-you-go, issued to fund the construction, rehabilitation, revitalization or expansion of a professional sports team’s primary facility or any other ancillary development to such primary facility.”
In other words, Thompson said, the purpose of the fund is “so we can help a professional sports team make a profit, get a stadium and come to Kansas.”
“I’ve never seen any evidence that these things pay for themselves, that taxpayers will receive a reduction in tax rates,” he said.
Research has shown that funneling taxpayer money into sports stadium and arena projects a poor public investment.
Attracting economic development, and the border war itself, goes beyond professional sports. In 2019, Kansas’ Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly and Missouri’s Republican Gov. Mike Parson, current Gov. Mike Kehoe’s predecessor, declared a truce. The two states vowed to temporarily halt the practice of recruiting businesses to cross the state line without job creation, in theory halting the border war.
But that did not include Kansas City’s professional sports teams, Kelly told the Missouri Independent in June 2024.
That was the first sign of the truce’s disintegration. Kansas City, Missouri’s City Council formalized an end to the truce this September. The council repealed a 10-year moratorium on tax incentives for job creation inside city limits that was passed in response to the truce. The truce expired in August.
Sports gambling dollars make up a relatively new revenue stream for Kansas. The state legalized sportsbooks in 2022 and could consider modifying regulations that govern books in the 2026 session.
The way sports wagering is regulated in Kansas allows gaming facility managers to keep 90% of revenues. The state gets 10%. Of that portion, the first $750,000 is deposited into the White Collar Crime Fund, which supports investigations of illegal wagers.
Once the white collar fund takes its allotted portion, 2% of what remains goes toward the Gambling Addiction Grant Fund, and 80% to the attracting professional sports coiffeur. In fiscal year 2024, about $8.7 million was deposited into it.
The state hasn’t yet used any of the $26 million, according to Megan Stookey, a spokesperson for Senate President Ty Masterson, who is running for the Republican nomination for governor.
If recruitment efforts don’t succeed, the funds will be reappropriated as the Legislature sees fit, she said. The Legislative Coordinating Council, which is made up of legislative leadership, is the body that could publicly consider any potential deals between the state and a professional sports team while the Legislature is not in session.
“Kansans can expect discussions to progress,” Stookey said in an email, “with the LCC prepared to review any proposals in the (time) prior to the deadline.”
Patrick Lowry, a spokesperson for the Kansas Department of Commerce, said the agency “continues to conduct a careful analysis of costs and benefits as part of discussions to keep the Chiefs and Royals in the region while maximizing growth opportunities for Kansas.”
Echoing nearly identical comments given to reporters in the past, Lowry said “all major economic development projects require discretion and confidentiality,” and he declined to comment on negotiations or agreements.
