Tldr: when these initiatives are decided by politicians they get wine and dine vip treatment, swaying their decision. When it’s decided by voters and ballot initiatives, it tends to be shot down - the jig is up, many voters don’t believe investing in stadiums helps local economies enough. Ultimately the electorate is tired of footing the bill for private business and billionaire profits. Shocking.
I’m from the area originally. My main issue is there is nothing that makes the stadium affordable to all people.
Most of the season tickets for the chiefs were owned by people in Kansas. So why am I pay tax money to fund people in kansas?
Last time I went to a ball game, it was about 400 dollars for ok tickets for 3 people, a few beers and a little food.
Make it where am average family can attend on a regular basis and I may consider paying for it with tax money.
I deleted my comment going off on this same tangent because blah, but you are not alone I fully agree. It’s so expensive these days, I don’t know anyone personally who goes to NFL games on the regular, and with TV blackouts the fact a stadium exists nearby is ironically an active detriment to my NFL experience lol.
Make the ticket prices affordable so more locals can enjoy it again, maybe then we can talk about public funding.
The Lions have had lots of regular people that went to all the games, but that’s probably going to end soon. When they sucked season tickets could be around 2k/ticket for decent seats, the prices went up by around 2-3x now though.
If this chart is accurate, lions single game tickets are averaging around $110/ticket last year. That’s on the lower end and would still an easy $400+ outing for a party of 3
I’m not familiar with their season tickets, how’s the wait list and availability? Lot of markets require waiting in a multi year queue (and maintenance fees or memberships) to even have a chance at a season ticket. People hang on to those and will them to heirs 🙄
They haven’t had a waiting list until this year for season tickets. Either way I’m totally on the watching at home is a better experience.
When I was a kid, we went fairly often and we were poor as shit. My dad was frugal and didn’t even like sports but it was affordable entertainment.
Because back then the money was made by selling tickets to fans and concessions. Now teams get more money from broadcast deals so they stopped caring about the fans and jacked up all the prices fans pay.
I dunno man, when they redid the broncos stadium however long ago my life improved so much. I mean first of all…
Okay maybe you have a point 😆
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The billionaire team owners can pay for it if they want it so bad.
Agreed, but cities often fund stadiums. This is an interesting precedent
A good precedent. I wish every major city would do this rather than getting repeatedly fucked over by these trash billionaire owners. Fuck em right back
You mean give handouts to billionaires?
Sure. They do that in a lot of ways, but specifically with stadiums it’s super common
Most of the renovations only helped the wealthy. They want to convert normal seats to more boxes, and add vip entrances. Paid for by local blue collar workers while a billionaire keeps the profit.
KC voters are smarter than the money people thought.
Best of both worlds for KCMO, really. Don’t have to get bent over a barrel by the Hunts, but the region will keep its team. There’s a hard to quantify benefit to being a “major league” metro area, but the exact municipality usually gets screwed. If KCK or Overland Park wants to play dress up, then I’m sure everyone east of the state line will say to let 'em.
Arrowhead is honestly just okay. There’s nothing nearby and it is wide open to the elements, which, as we saw during the playoffs, can be very unforgiving. The wind chill there is rough.
The Royals have had maybe 10 winning seasons in the past 40 years, and the games aren’t locally televised. I’m all for the downtown stadium, but if they want public funding they should address those 2 issues first. Chiefs made a huge mistake tying their fate to a garbage franchise like the Royals.
The TV thing was something I mentioned to my mom. Like it’s really hard to give a shit about the Royals, or baseball in general, because you can’t watch any games without some crazy cable package. Add in that the Royals are trash most of the time and it’s an even harder sell.
The Chiefs are a solid element and the TV part helps a lot. Of course winning helps a lot too. Because I remember the bad years but they were still at least on TV (usually).
Genuine question–why are you all for the public paying for a business venture to help the already wealthy extract more wealth from the local population? Not trying to come off like a dick, I’m genuinely curious why anyone would thing the public funding private business ventures like this is a good thing.
Not for it, and not a resident of KCMO so doesn’t matter much to me. With that said downtown KC has been a wasteland till very recently, and adding a stadium would be the final step to bringing it back to life after the interstate highway system destroyed it. The stadium would increase foot traffic and make it a much more vibrant place. Don’t really care how it gets done, just that it gets done.
