Mark Schnabel: SportSpeak

The state of Kansas is already the home of Sporting Kansas City.

If members of the state legislature and the governor’s office have their way, the state will also be the home of the Kansas City Chiefs and Kansas City Royals.

How did this come to be and what are the state’s chances of landing two more major sports franchises?

According to the Associated Press, the current leases for the two teams run through Jan. 2031.

Back in April, voters of Jackson County, Mo., rejected a sales tax proposal that would include a new stadium for the Royals, nearer to downtown, and substantial upgrades for Arrowhead Stadium, the home of the Chiefs.

As part of a special session of the Kansas legislature, a bill passed that would use state bonds to fund up to 70 percent of the costs of new stadiums. The teams would be responsible for the remaining 30 percent.

According to the AP report, the Chiefs would provide between $500 and $700 million for a new facility. It did not say how much the Royals were willing to spend.

The bonds would be for a period of 30 years and would be paid back “with revenues from sports betting, state lottery ticket sales and new sales and alcohol taxes collected from shopping and entertainment districts around the new stadiums.”

Arrowhead seats 78,416, while Kauffman seats 37,903. Not including recent renovations, they cost $43 million and $70 million to build respectively (in 1968 dollars).

While estimates of new stadiums have not been provided in any reports I have seen, the most recent NFL stadiums in Los Angeles and Las Vegas cost between $6 and $5 billion for the Rams and Chargers and $1.9 billion for the Raiders.

The proposed Las Vegas baseball stadium for the Athletics is expected to cost $1.5 billion.

Those costs may not be quite that high for Kansas since we’re not talking about LA- or Vegas-type real estate prices or construction costs, but we’re still talking a pretty penny here.

Seating for new Kansas City stadiums have not been disclosed, especially since we’re so early in the process, but the current trend is for smaller stadiums — around 30,000 for baseball and 60,000 to 70,000 for football.

Smaller capacities allow a higher percentage of attendance and higher ticket prices, which is what owners desire.

Locations also are up in the air. Had these proposals been made 10 to 25 years ago, the area around the Kansas Speedway and Children’s Mercy Park in Wyandotte County would have worked, but that area has been pretty built up in recent years.

With that entertainment district already established, can the region support another entertainment district around a new stadium complex? Would a new complex cannibalize existing districts such as the Speedway-CMP district?

Do you go out to the suburbs, or do you try to find an area closer to the central business district for redevelopment?

Wyandotte County? Johnson County? Leavenworth County? Even, say, Miami County?

Harvey County (does it have to be in the KC Metro Area)? It’s 116 miles from Milwaukee to Green Bay, just saying. You can even take a train for that trip, just like you can from Kansas City to Newton.

How much infrastructure do you need to build, rebuild, renovate?

And despite the actions of the Kansas government, it’s far from a done deal.

Missouri officials are expected to come up with new proposals. Several other cities have expressed interest in the Royals, including Nashville and Charlotte.

Then there are all the other questions about what a civil government’s responsibility to essentially a private business. Should a government build something for a private business, especially something that, these days, can cost in the billions of dollars?

In the distant past, many stadiums were built by a municipality and rented out to a professional team, but in those days, the local government had a lot more control of those facilities.

Then there is the question of return on investment by the municipality or state.

Does the economic benefit outweigh the cost? Can that money be better spent elsewhere? Housing, education, health care, infrastructure, economic development in other fields, etc., etc., etc.?

Some of those questions aren’t even for me to answer. Some are above my pay grade. All are for the Kansas voters to decide and tell their legislators what they want.

Mark Schnabel is the sports editor of the Kansan.