Yes, it is true.

The Kansas City Chiefs are moving to Kansas.

We'll examine the big move and what it might mean for the state and the fans.

Stay with us.

This program on KTWU is brought to you by the Carol Jory Foundation.

We are excited about this regional partnership and committed to delivering real results that benefit Kansas, strengthen our region, and uplift our local community.

With that said, Chiefs, Clark Hunt Family welcome the Kansas.

Well, you heard it right.

You're not dreaming.

It really happened.

On December 22nd, 2025, Chiefs owner Clark Hunt announced that the Kansas City Chiefs are moving to Kansas and building a new stadium.

Wow.

That's about the best opening to an IGI we've ever had.

I'm your host, Bob Beaty, and in this program we're going to at least try to process this news.

Although I think like the building of the stadium itself, it will be a five year journey and we still won't believe it until we watch them play in Kansas, in Kansas and beat- Oh, probably the Denver Broncos.

Better yet, the Raiders.

Well, we have a great show for you to begin this journey.

We'll be talking with Crystal Watson, mayor and CEO of Kansas City, Kansas, and Wyandotte County, where the stadium will be located.

Then we'll be joined by Washburn University economist doctor Paul Byrne and Kansas Reflector columnist Eric Thomas to dive into the economics and cultural factors of this massive undertaking.

So let's get the ball rolling.

Well, I'm so happy to be here with mayor Crystal Watson and also CEO of Wyandotte County.

And thanks so much for joining us.

And I know you've been heavily involved and you look pretty happy about this.

And I am as well.

So tell us a bit about your background.

How long you've you've been in your position and what skills you brought to this position?

I think it's pertinent to what we're going to be talking about.

Sure.

So I've been mayor and CEO, unified government, Wyandotte County, Kansas City, Kansas, very long name.

Yeah.

You know what, on the 15th of this month, it was 60 days.

Oh my goodness.

Okay, so 60 days.

Not too far.

You may have set the record for the busiest or most most impactful 60 days.

And recent history.

Absolutely, absolutely.

My background has been I was a former, chamber leader.

For KDCC Inc, which we transitioned into a regional chamber of the heartland Black Chamber of Commerce.

I did that for ten years, and prior to that, I had 17 years, project management experience.

Worked at Sprint when it first came to the city, back in the day.

And then I was the, former deputy chief of staff for neighborhood small business development for the former mayor, David Alvey.

And so I work there as well.

And before becoming mayor, I was the executive director for the Kansas City, Kansas School Foundation for excellence.

So I have a strong background in, governance and business management education.

I also, did several years with Truman Medical Center, which is now called University Health in Kansas City, Missouri public Hospital.

And I was a director there.

So I have some strong management experience as well as training, doing performance management, project management, business process improvement, a little bit.

Everything.

Well, I mean, obviously I've done a number of shows.

Actually, I did one with, David Toland before the deal was announced.

So I know there's, things that can't be talked about.

And, you know, just because the way business works.

But, yes, what can you tell us about the negotiations?

Mark Donovan, the president of the Chiefs, said that Kansas was, I'm paraphrasing, quite relentless and did not give up.

And he was actually, quite impressed with that.

What can you tell us about sort of the, the tone of the negotiations, that ended up being, you know, with the deal that that occurred.

Well, I think the tone is going very well.

I mean, you know, you always experience a few hiccups here and there, but overall, I'm very pleased with the direction that we're headed in.

We are looking for a partnership with the state as well as with the Chiefs, but mostly with the state.

And that seems to be going extremely well.

We've been working very closely with Lieutenant Governor Toland and met with Governor Kelly, and some of the staff at the state and some of the different departments.

We're at the process in the negotiations where we have said, yes, we have an ordinance that's in place.

And so over the next couple of months, we'll be reviewing all of that.

And, you know, the process continues.

We've only just begun.

Well, this this was, I was on record as saying that if this happened, it'd be the biggest, event, really, to hit Kansas ever.

Yeah.

And just.

And we can talk more about that.

And then everyone is speculating and put myself whether this would happen.

I thought it would, but tell us about when you, you know, leading up to and maybe when you found out this was happening, your thought process or just your reaction.

I know you had a big reaction of the day at the at the, yes.

Announcement.

So did I. I will tell you, I was not expecting this to happen.

Wow.

Okay.

I just knew that Missouri would not let the chiefs go.

And so, I told people, this is never going to happen.

And literally a week and a half before my inauguration, I find out that it's quite possible that the Chiefs are coming to Kansas.

And then, of course, we find out.

And they asked me to come to Topeka, and we make the announcement together.

And, of course, you know, I have that big line.

Welcome to Kansas.

So, I was very surprised.

And did you did you get a phone call and you're just sitting, are we?

Hello.

And what?

And your eyes went big.

How did you find out?

Yeah.

So revealing.

Any big secret?

No, no.

Initially, I had gotten the message that the, the say wanted to build a relationship with the mayor's office.

Of course, being new in leadership.

And I said absolutely.

And then probably the day before, I'm thinking I'm going just to build relationship.

I find out, oh, it's going to be a different kind of meeting.

And I'm like, really?

And yeah, that's when I find out that there's going to be some conversation about the Chiefs.

So you have only been in office a short time, although it's very exciting.

Yeah.

What does this deal.

And you know it's not everything's not nailed down 100%.

What does it mean for I'll start with Kansas City and Wyandotte County.

And then we can of course, get bigger with the state.

Are you the you're the expert on on that in your area?

What is it?

What does it mean going forward now and going forward?

Well, what it means going forward is that we have a legacy that's now here in the state of Kansas, of course, and Wyandotte County.

And I think that's pretty exciting.

I do I mean, the Chiefs are the number one NFL team in the world.

That's right.

And so that means a lot.

And I think the biggest thing is that it will open up so many opportunities for Wyandotte County.

We do have residents that aren't pleased with the decision that our commission board made to move forward with the Chiefs here.

But I think overall they'll find that as this new leadership within works to partner with the state.

I think that in the end, they'll see how beneficial it will be.

And, you know, I read the first agreement that was announced.

There's also some aspects of this that where the chiefs will contribute to community building, funding for projects within the community and that could directly impact as many as well.

Right?

That's.

Absolutely.

And I will tell you that, you know, a lot of folks think that the deal, per se, is always within or the benefit is always within the deal, but that's not necessarily always true.

We've got five years to build relationship with the Chiefs, and some things aren't going to be in the deal itself.

You know, the chiefs are very philanthropic.

The players are.

There'll be opportunity there for us to make those connections with our residents and our schools and with the community overall.

So I, I really look at this as a very positive thing for Wyandotte County and for our residents, for the community at large, to have access where they've not had access before.

And that's all going to be built on those relationships.

So there's in the discussions of all this.

We hear from people who talk about stadiums and they they, they bring it down to dollars and cents and you get some very detailed arguments against stadiums.

But I've, I also had the counter argument of saying there's a subjective element.

I think you're alluding to this, which is not necessarily dollars and cents.

We know that's important in your background, you know that.

But the subjective element, which is what does this do to a community to have, a the Chiefs there, but also saying, hey, this community is on the move is going forward.

Talk about that, about, you know, it's really about progression.

Yeah.

And it's really about how you package it and how you present it to the world, basically.

And really to our metropolitan area as well as the region.

If you look at what the Chiefs bring over, the economic impact alone can supersede our expectations because you've got a stadium and you'll have hotel retail around it.

Right.

But you still have the legends.

We've got American Royal Bucky's is coming to it actually is here.

And but then there's other parts of Wyandotte County that can benefit from just this development project.

We've got our downtown area.

We've got our northeast area that has plenty of land that we can build on and build our tax base, as well as other areas like Argentine and Rosedale and Turner and Armerdale.

We've just got so much to offer.

The community, outside of Wyandotte County, and I am thrilled that we're going to be able to expose and make people aware of what a jewel we really are and what that county.

We only have a short time.

Appreciate again.

You're coming.

Is there anything, what would you like to say to people, that maybe they're not hearing?

Or maybe they heard some of the critics, which is fine.

Yeah.

That that you want to make sure they understand.

You know, I want people to trust what we're doing.

We have a phenomenal commission board.

It's not like what it has been in the past.

And I really hope that the community understands that we are doing the very best we can with what we have been given in terms of how this all is going to work out.

We communicate very effectively right now, and even though maybe some commissioners may disagree, we still are on the same page that we want what's best for the community.

We are passionate and cares so deeply about our residents.

And at the end of the day, we are looking forward to having a wonderful relationship with the Chiefs, with the state and anybody else and all our state legislators.

Who are standing by and hoping for the best for this entire situation.

Well, thanks so much for talking with us.

And I think you, as I said before, you may have had may have been having one of the most interesting, first couple of months in office of the joy in my life right now.

Yeah.

Again, thank you.

So much.

I was able to talk, our ask a question of, Chiefs president Mark Donovan relatively recently.

We'll hear what he had to say about Kansas offer.

And then, after that, we'll talk more about the Kansas City Chiefs moving to Kansas.

I think both offers were compelling, so I want to be crystal clear on that.

I think if you go back into the timeline of how this all happened, I mean, this goes back to 22 when we put this legislation in place and it was sports gambling, I lottery, and things that they played into that was probably going to, I would say one of the advantages they had was working with one entity.

We were negotiating with one entity, the terms of the deals.

This gets really, really complex and really, really complicated, and negotiations are hard.

And that's why I mentioned, like, there were days you walk away from a negotiation, like we're not doing a deal.

But they, they persevered with both sort of compromise.

And we found a way to get it to.

Well, as you heard there, Mark Donovan, the Chiefs president, said that Kansas, persevered, in its, quest for the Kansas City Chiefs.

And we will persevere here and continue to talk about this.

And I'm joined by Eric Thomas, a columnist for The Kansas Reflector, and Paul Byrne, a professor of economics.

I love this, the guest list, because I'm a political scientist.

So we're trying to cover as much as we can.

But I'll start Paul with you.

Sure.

Which is people are going to be talking about and analyzing and trying to figure out, including myself, the financing of all of this.

We're hearing some big numbers.

There's some criticisms coming out as soon as we can imagine.

So we also heard, at the announcement of some of the politicians saying, this is not there's not going to be any new taxes.

Yeah.

So give us a bit of, the, maybe the simplified version of how this is the stadium will be paid for.

Sure.

So new taxes kind of depends how you define new.

Right.

So so the basic structure, the way start bonds work.

They're not that complicated.

They're they're a type of tax increment financing.

They're used to induce businesses to relocate into a particular area.

Jurisdiction, in this case, the state would create a district.

And once you create that district, the basic idea is that, the way this funds development is that all the overlapping jurisdictions, whether could be the state, could be the local governments, the tax base, the amount of tax base that they can assess their tax on gets frozen and whatever the year it's created.

And then any growth above and beyond that gets that increment, gets diverted in order to pay off for the investments in this case, the main investment is is building the stadium and then also the headquarters.

So some of the big, the way it basically works to say, all right, well, we build a nice stadium.

There's going to be a whole lot of dollars that are going to come over from Missouri.

All that extra spending is going to generate a bunch of state sales taxes.

Star bonds focus just on the sales taxes and, all those extra sales taxes.

We're just going to divert the extra money and use that to pay off the bonds that we took out in order to pay the stadium.

Some of the tricky parts is it just captures any growth.

So if they're if you put a star bond in an area that already has some type of sales tax, a Walmart or Costco or whatever it is, just inflation would would cause that sales tax to go up.

The star bond doesn't make a distinction as to whether or not this actually came from this new thing that was built, or whether it came from inflation, or whether it came from just some random person that stopped off and got a meal there at a, at a in the middle of May or something like that.

So because of that, it has the potential to capture some other stuff.

So it does have the potential to divert taxes that we would have otherwise not had to have diverted.

So can of Kansas.

And we're talking about money, big time money here.

So the Chiefs need the money to build the stadium.

So Kansas takes out a bond or a loan, right?

And then is that correct?

Yeah.

So some type of authority, it's not technically the state of Kansas, but if it's a loan defaults, state of Kansas can say that's not us, right.

It's it's so these dedicated increment, whatever the increment is, the sales tax that would have been generated off that increment is, is now going to be used to pay off though.

To pay off the bonds.

Yeah.

Okay.

So if right now, whatever area it is, is producing this much in sales tax, we'll just say $100.

Yeah.

So then once this star bond system comes into place, if two years from now and now produces $200, that $100 extra would go toward paying off the bonds.

Exactly.

Oh, my gosh, the sales tax collected on the excise.

I am on the extra base.

Yeah, I hope I'm not.

Maybe I'm the average person trying to figure yeah, I figure that.

Okay.

So again, I don't know the answer to this.

That's why you're here.

Yeah.

Why what's the criticism of that?

Well, it is it, it sounds like a pretty good system to me, but I'm reading articles.

Are people saying, oh, maybe we don't like this.

It's not the extent to which that growth in that, in that sales taxes is coming from new spending, from all the people, whether they're Kansas residents or Missouri residents, who would have been spending that money in resort in Missouri.

It works.

It's it's genuinely a good thing.

But if you if you put an existing sales tax base in there, let's say you have a Walmart.

Walmart's could easily have 400 million in sales.

Well, in ten years, if you didn't do anything, that 400 million would become 500 million just from inflation.

You can only collect tax on the 400 million.

That extra 100 million which would have gone into the general fund is now going to be is going to go over to the, to pay for it.

So this actually happened in Topeka, like maybe 8 or 9 years ago.

They were having trouble paying off their star bond.

The city proposed this state didn't sign off on it.

They wanted to extend the star bond up Topeka Boulevard and actually capture the Walmart.

There was no new development taking place there.

They just wanted to pay off the bonds quicker.

And the state said, no, no, you can't do that.

So so it just captures any growth once.

It's once it's set in the base year.

Any growth, whether it comes from inflation, whether it comes presumably from all the extra events that are going to take place at the stadium, all the new money, coming from the team's payroll.

Right.

All that other stuff.

Although the payroll is not included in the Star Bonds, that's another side of the benefit is that a lot of income taxes could be collected, from the players from the visiting players and from the team.

One interesting aspect, I suppose somebody could be watching this show in Missouri.

But the interesting aspect is it's, of course, a sales tax.

Correct?

Yep.

So various, estimates are that the fans going to Chiefs games, can vary up to 50% or more from out of state.

Right.

And so they would be coming in to Kansas.

And drinking their beer and buying their souvenirs.

And that money then would be going to pay off the stadium.

Right.

And even the Kansas residents assuming they're Chiefs fans their money would have been gone.

It's it stays in Kansas as opposed to going to Missouri.

So if it's an actual Chiefs game, I don't make it much of a distinction as an economist as to whether or not, they're residents of Kansas, residents of Missouri.

I assume they would have otherwise been in Missouri, either.

Either way.

Eric, I'll go to you now.

You have been to a number of, football games, and you've written about, the this will be a dome.

And you, I think, in your, let you characterize your own writing.

Of course, but you're both, wary of domes, but also open to the possibility.

How how could how would this play out, down the road if if if if since it's going to be a dome for the Chiefs and for our fans.

Yeah.

I think, I think the idea of the star bond and the dome together, I think is kind of an interesting concept too, because the idea of being able to host much more than just outdoor music concerts or just, Chiefs games, which is predominantly what an Arrowhead Stadium is being used for right now.

Like what?

What would a dome be able to be used for?

Are we going to be able to use that for a different kind of concert?

For more concerts?

Are we going to be able to use that for, other kinds of convention type activities?

And how might that change?

The possibilities of financing things off the Star bond?

I think those are probably some open questions.

You know, being a, member of the media and covering things within domes before, you know, domes can be really, great for season spaces for entertaining, for a city.

But they can also be kind of, you know, aged hollow husks ten years down the road, 15 years down the road.

Nothing ages quite as poorly as a poorly planned or poorly constructed dome.

And so that would be one of my, concerns about this is obviously, you want to make sure that you're, spending money prudently when you're building a dome like this, but also, I don't think you want to do it on the cheap.

Otherwise you could end up with this, kind of dome that's really hard to, retrofit and update, in that way.

And then I think the other thing that is just interesting about transitioning a team like the Chiefs from being an outdoor team to being indoors is what does that mean for the sporting experience?

What does it mean for fans that are, used to being outside, to braving the cold, to, you know, being, there for a fly over some of those, kind of signature arrowhead experiences that many fans may be used to.

Maybe that's going to change what's going to happen on game days.

I mean, it certainly will change some of those experiences.

I think probably Arrowhead is most known for barbecue tailgates.

And, you know, what does that mean, for the stadium as well.

So I think those are some of the questions.

Yeah.

You're talking to someone who, as a kid went to a game in the Seattle Kingdome.

I called it the Monument to Cement.

So I think that's an important point because it's not just.

Oh, great, the Chiefs are coming.

I think we all have to keep an eye on what?

What they build, because it could really determine sort of the fan experience.

We only have a, you know, a little bit of time, but going forward, you know, we can be I think we we negative, but I don't I don't want to it, you know, at least for this show is what are the possibilities.

You alluded to it and you as well for this coming to Kansas and having a dome and and I mean I when I was talking to people, we're talking about obviously concerts but you know, what sort of things do you envision how I mean, do other sporting events, you may ultimately get the world football championship might come here.

You have to get it, get it from Dallas.

That would that would be the final story.

I sorry, the, the final football like call in basketball so you can get additional events.

And those events would bring new money into into the state of Kansas.

Some of it might be shifted, you know, if they have the high school football state championships would have been in Emporia, would have been somewhere else.

Some of that will move to Wyandotte County.

That's not necessarily gain a gain to the state.

But, definitely opens up some, some possibilities, in terms of additional events and more visitors coming in.

Yeah.

All right.

Yeah.

I think, I think there's kind of a dark joke on, the in the Kansas City area where I live that, you know, now that, Arrowhead Stadium won't be the home of the Chiefs anymore.

Like, the dark joke is like, what is the, what are the businesses that are going to suffer from that?

And the dark joke is that there's not a lot around that stadium in terms of entertainment districts, in terms of restaurants.

You know, maybe one restaurant is going to lose out.

And I think that the real, the real possibilities for, building a domed stadium on the Kansas side is what's surrounding that stadium.

Is it something that people want to go and visit?

Is it something that once, a game is over, that that's still a vibrant and thriving area, not just on game day, but, 12 months out of the year?

I think you want that to be a destination, in order for the financing to work, but also just for it to be a point of civic pride and not to be something that you drive past on I-70 or I-4 35.

Yeah.

Well, thank you both so much.

I appreciate it, and I think we'll be talking to you down the road all we have five years or something.

Maybe it'll be a, a constant, topic of discussion.

That's all the time we have for this episode of it.

Yeah.

If you have any comments or suggestions for future topics, send us an email at issues@ktwu.org.

If you'd like to view this program again or any previous episodes of IGI, visit us online at watch.ktwu.org for IGI I'm Bob Beatty and thanks for watching.

This program on KTWU is brought to you by the Carol Jory Foundation.