Kansas Sports Betting May Help Land NFL Team

If the Kansas City Chiefs make good on their apparent intentions to leave Missouri, the legalization of Kansas sports betting will be among the biggest driving forces why.

The reigning NFL AFC champions recently announced that they will be vacating their Arrowhead Stadium home at the end of the decade and moving into a domed venue that crosses the borderlines between The Show Me State and The Sunflower State. The move is equal parts surprising and not entirely unexpected. The idea of the Chiefs playing somewhere outside Kansas City remains bizarre. But they had been seeking favorable funding for a while. Kansas has seemingly stepped up and provided it. As ESPN’s Nate Taylor writes:

“The announcement came shortly after a council of Kansas lawmakers voted unanimously to allow for sales tax and revenue (STAR) bonds to be issued to cover up to 70 percent of the cost of the stadium and accompanying mixed-use district. The bonds, which are estimated to be around $2.4 billion, will be paid off with state sales and liquor tax revenues generated in a defined area around it. Chiefs owner Clark Hunt said the family will commit $1 billion in additional development, a portion of which can also be incentivized by the STAR bonds.”

This development comes as a major blow to The Show Me State. Missouri lost the St. Louis Rams to Los Angeles less than a decade ago. Their exit was fueled by similar circumstances. The Rams were seeking more public funding for their own new stadium that they couldn’t get in Missouri.

Kansas Sports Betting Revenue Played a Big Part in the State’s Offer to the Chiefs

At the time of the Chiefs’ announcement, it is believed that The Show Me State was willing to cover up to 50 percent of the new stadium costs. The organization clearly wanted more. Kansas gave it to them, in the form of a 70 percent (max) contribution—an offer they probably never could have made without the legalization of sports betting in Kansas.

Kansas officials have noted that funding for the Chiefs’ new stadium will specifically come from sports betting revenue. This is the first distinction of its kind for pro sports. Public funding isn’t new. But the proceeds coming predominantly through revenue generated from online sports betting in the United States is unprecedented.

Granted, the logic makes sense. Since Kansas sports betting was legalized in 2022, the state has raked in $26 million worth of tax revenue from gambling. And this does not include how much the state has made in 2025. Those numbers will be finalized once the calendar flips to 2026.

In the grand scheme of things, this is a fraction of the $2.4 billion promise The Sunflower made to the Chiefs. But it still plays a part in Kansas’ financial offerings. After all, the state created a fund using sports betting revenue specifically for a purpose such as this one.

“The Department of Commerce says the ‘Attracting Professional Sports to Kansas Fund’ now stands at $24.1 million,” writes Dave D’Marko of FOX 4. “According to terms of the agreement between Kansas and the Chiefs, 65 percent of that money could go to the stadium project and an additional 10 percent to an accompanying fund. It’s a drop in the bucket of the state’s $1.8 billion commitment.”

In reality, this could be more of a public-relations cause. As D’Marko alludes to, the fund will make up less than 2 percent of the state’s total investment.

Still, if nothing else, the legalization of Kansas sports betting seemingly set the stage for the state to start making overtures like the one that successfully wooed the Chiefs.

Could Missouri Have Prevented This?

It has become popular in the aftermath of everything to wonder whether The Show Me State could have prevented the Chiefs from relocating their homefield. That is somewhat fair.

Funding has proven harder to come by for sports teams in Missouri. It’s natural to wonder whether they could have promised the Chiefs more had their own gaming laws changed earlier. Remember, sports betting in Missouri didn’t launch until December 2025. The Kansas sports betting market is now years older. And it has the tax revenue to show for it.

At the same time, it feels disingenuous to frame the Chiefs’ decision through this lens. Again, Kansas sports betting revenue is providing less than 2 percent of the public funding for the new stadium. That’s with more than three years’ worth of legal sports betting in the books. Even if Missouri sports betting also launched in 2022, the revenue could not have bridged the existing gap.

The Real Reason Why Kansas Swayed the Chiefs is Clear

Kansas seems prepared to foot $1.8 billion in expenses for the stadium. That’s between 70 and 75 percent of what it’s expected to cost. If Missouri was offering the Chiefs 50 percent coverage on a $2.4 billion project, we are talking about a difference of around $800 million. As lucrative as tax revenue from sports betting can be, it never would have negated this much separation.

This all really seems like it comes down to a raw matter of dollars and cents. The Chiefs are a business. They want a new stadium that will allow them to experiment with new tech, partnerships and general offerings. They certainly want an opportunity to bid on the Super Bowl.

Kansas is now giving them that chance, and saving the team something like $800 million of operating costs in the process. So while sports betting revenue played a part in the Chiefs bailing on their future in Kansas City, it is far from the primary catalyst behind their departure.

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