The push to lure two Kansas City professional teams away from Missouri and to the Sunflower State is officially on.
Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly signed House Bill 2001 into law on Friday, allowing her state to offer the NFL’s Chiefs and MLB’s Royals stadium project incentives to move across the state line through sales tax and revenue bonds.
A portion of the tax cuts offered to the pro teams will come from Kansas’ sports betting revenue.
“We know that modernizing our economic development tools provides the opportunity to increase private investment into the state,” Gov. Kelly said in a statement. “By modifying the STAR Bonds program, one of our strongest economic development mechanisms, lawmakers crafted a viable option for attracting professional sports teams to Kansas."
Eye on the prize
The Kansas legislature held a special session earlier this week to pass the bonds bill, which passed 84-38 in the House and 27-8 in the Senate.
Lawmakers are hoping that an offer to cover up to 70%, up from the 50% in the previous program, of the developmental cost for new stadiums will be enough to get the Chiefs or Royals, or both, to make the jump.
It would take 30 years to pay back the bonds using a new sales tax in a stadium district. That includes liquor taxes in the district as well as money from the Kansas sports betting fund. Cities and counties in the stadium districts would have the ability to opt in or out of the tax program.
Kansas, which has already exceeded the $10 million projection in tax revenue from sports betting with a month left in the fiscal year, might have the money to lure the teams away.
The Royals want a new stadium while the Chiefs are seeking major upgrades to Arrowhead Stadium, but voters rejected a tax plan to fund the project initiatives.
It can’t hurt
How likely Kansas is to land those pro teams is unknown.
Missouri will try to keep the Chiefs and Royals, and some Kansas legislatures see the pro teams using this as leverage to remain in their current state.
What Missouri doesn’t have is the ability to use sports betting as a funding option. The Show Me State has worked for years to legalize online and retail wagering to no avail legislatively.
The Chiefs and Royals are part of a pro-sports-led coalition that turned in 340,000 voter signatures to the Secretary of State’s Office in May with hopes of getting Missouri sports betting on the November ballot.
Two of the most popular pro teams in the state flirting with a move to Kansas certainly couldn’t hurt the push for wagering in Missouri.
