The Most Unlikely Effort to Transfer a Sports Team in History
tense level of fan devotion that surpasrican pro sports extortion plot that involves stadium finance. The team moved to Kansas City in 1963, not long after it was involved in the founding of the American Football League. In the more than 60 years that have passed since then, the Chiefs have created an inses that of the NFL and transformed a sizable portion of the lower Midwest into Chiefs Kingdom. From 1990 to 2009, they sold out every game, even in a few years when the club struggled. The squad is now a true dynasty after winning three Super Bowls in the previous five seasons, and Arrowhead Stadium is not simply full of fans ld seem that the Kansas City Chiefs are a bad choice to be involved in the typical Ame It wou
All of this hasn’t prevented the team, meanwhile, from threatening to leave the city and relocate somewhere if fans don’t give them $500 billion. It appears that the Chiefs are counting on voters to be either extremely naive or extremely afraid.
The team’s goal is to support the $800 million in improvements to Arrowhead Stadium, which will increase the team’s ownership stake by the Hunt family. At least a few billion dollars in wealth, the Hunts claim they will contribute $300 million. Before any cost overruns, it leaves the remaining $500 million to be paid for the taxpayers. The Chiefs are hoping that voters will approve a 40-year extension of Jackson County’s 3/8th-cent sales tax, which costs residents 38 cents for every $100 they spend.
Last week, Chiefs president Mark Donovan stated to the local NBC affiliate that the team “would just have to look at all our possibilities” if voters decided not to prolong the tax. Donovan responded, “I think they would have to include leaving Kansas City,” in response to a reporter’s question about whether it meant leaving the place the club has always called home. He continued by saying that the squad would be “ready to accept a deal” to remain in its hometown.
The area they now play in is the only one in the world where the Chiefs can maximize their business. They have no intention of ever leaving the Kansas City region, not even in a million years. They are not the Rams, the other Missouri team that spent 20 years in St. Louis.
