The Kansas City Chiefs just released a two-page statement with numerous claims about the benefits of a new stadium, practice facility, and team headquarters in Kansas. There are reasons to be skeptical.

First, the press release includes some findings from an economic impact analysis that was conducted by a consultant the team hired. We don’t have the full report itself—just these selected highlights the Chiefs chose to share.

The consultant, Econsult Solutions, appears to be using standard economic impact methods. My concern isn’t who performed the study; it’s that these models are only as good as the assumptions that go into them, and those assumptions haven’t yet been made public.

The full report should be released so we can see and evaluate the assumptions. For example, I’d like to know how the authors calculated visitor spending, how they calculated multiplier effects, and how much of this projected economic activity is actually new to Kansas.

These studies are often flawed in their analysis and assumptions. Academic economists caution that these studies can overstate the benefits of publicly subsidized projects by measuring gross economic activity rather than net new economic activity. The ongoing debate over the World Cup’s promised economic benefits illustrates why those assumptions deserve careful scrutiny.

A $4.5 billion project will undoubtedly generate billions of dollars in economic activity. The question isn’t whether activity occurs; it’s whether that activity is genuinely new to Kansas and whether it generates tax revenue to justify the public subsidy.

Also, what exactly is included in the $1.2 billion in ancillary development the press release mentions? Hotels? Housing? Entertainment? And how much of that development is expected because of the stadium, rather than development that would have occurred anyway? Recall that the STAR bond district captures all additional tax revenue, regardless of whether it is due to the Chiefs’ developments.

As a result, this selected summary of the report doesn’t tell us if the deal is worthwhile for taxpayers.

There are some things in the report that should be of note to taxpayers. For example, the release has the capital investment increased by about 12% from what we were told in December, but the projected construction impact increased by nearly 90%. That raises an obvious question about what changed between the two projections.

One answer may be that the press release measures impacts across the greater Kansas City region, not just Kansas. Kansas taxpayers, who are paying for this thing, should ask about the benefits to them specifically.

A skeptic might wonder if the authors included areas outside Kansas to inflate the economic impact number.

The press release tells us about new tax revenue—but not how much it will cost taxpayers to get that revenue. Every salesman wants to focus on the benefits of what they are selling. Kansans need to be mindful of the costs.

Regarding costs, in the December 2025 announcement, Kansas leaders were adamant that the Chiefs deal paid for itself through future revenues, required no funds from the state budget, and would require no new taxes.

Is that still the case?

We’re still waiting to learn the size of the STAR district—almost 300 square miles in past statements—and the baseline year for determining the amount to be given to the Chiefs. Those details matter because they determine whether the projected tax revenues actually exceed the public commitment. Until those questions are answered, it’s impossible to know whether the project pays for itself.

We just don’t know.

And again, this is all based on a two-page statement from the Chiefs about an economic impact study they haven’t released. The team owes taxpayers more information and more transparency.

The post More Noise than Signal from Latest Chiefs Release appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

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Interview Transcript

Patrick Tuohey (00:00)
Good morning, Kansas City. This is Patrick Tuohey, Kansas City’s second favorite Patrick, sitting in on the Pete Mundo Show for the whole morning. If you have read anything in the Kansas City papers about either the Royals Stadium or the Chiefs Stadium, the chances are that you are familiar with my next guest. J.C. Bradbury, a professor of economics at Kennesaw State University, has been studying the economic impacts of building stadiums, tearing down stadiums, getting teams, and losing teams. He’s got a book coming out at the end of next month called This One Will Be Different. I’ll get to the book in a second, JC, but my first question is: why do you hate baseball?

J.C. Bradbury (00:43)
Hi Patrick, thanks for having me on. I get that question a lot because I bring a lot of bad news, or uncomfortable truths, let’s say, about baseball. But I study these things because I love baseball. I’m a huge fan. I grew up an Atlanta Braves fan, but I follow baseball generally and all sorts of sports. I was an Atlanta United season ticket holder for many years. That’s why I do this — because I enjoy it.

Patrick Tuohey (01:09)
It’s funny — years ago somebody recommended Moneyball. It’s a fantastic book. The movie is just as good. I rewatched it the other day, and if you haven’t seen it or haven’t seen it in years, it really holds up. I think of that because baseball claims to be so statistics driven that you’d think fans would be more amenable to the kind of economic analysis you’re doing. But maybe it’s just love of the game and fandom that clouds their reason.

J.C. Bradbury (01:44)
There’s some of that. There are many people who are baseball fans, sports fans, who understand what I’m arguing — and I’d argue it’s more than you’d realize. But most of the people vocally speaking out about stadium issues and public finance are largely blinded by their own fandom. I deal with people on social media all the time who respond to things I say about stadiums and tell me I don’t understand the public finance — and they’re just totally incorrect. They don’t even bother to check it. It’s religion to some people. I say most people would give up their religion before they’d give up their subsidies to their sports teams.

Patrick Tuohey (02:27)
If you don’t already follow J.C. Bradbury on Twitter, I recommend it — JC underscore Bradbury. If you’re a fan of baseball, economics, or The Simpsons, you’ll love his account. So JC, tell me about your book, This One Will Be Different, which comes out at the end of July.

J.C. Bradbury (02:44)
I’ve been studying stadium subsidies and publicly funded stadiums for a very long time. I fell into it accidentally because the Atlanta Braves Stadium opened in Cobb County, a few miles from where I live — just outside Atlanta, where my family has been for generations. I had a lot of interest in how the stadium was built and funded, with three hundred million dollars in subsidies. I was familiar with a lot of the economics behind stadiums, and when I tried to share this research with other people, I was heavily rebuffed. So I began to study the issue more, and before I knew it, I had a very long book about the economics of stadiums. My idea was to explain public finance issues in stadiums using simpler methods. I use sound research methods, but I try to explain it through the narrative story of the Braves coming to Cobb County — here’s what happened, here’s what people argued, here’s what actually happened, let’s look at some of the financial numbers, and let’s understand the general intuition of why stadiums get built even though economists say they’re a bad deal. I look at the politics of it too. And one of the things I find is that these stadiums are mostly built by insider coalitions — chamber of commerce types, folks who are going to sit in the owner’s box and enjoy cocktails, or people with season tickets. They’re the large beneficiaries of the subsidy. They push these advocacy campaigns and try to get them passed as quickly as possible without going to voters if they can. That’s why we get these deals.

Patrick Tuohey (04:35)
One of the things that frustrates me about this whole issue — and I’d be curious if you agree, though I hate when TV and radio hosts make a statement and then ask the guest if they agree, and here I am — is that when St. Louis was considering funding a Major League Soccer stadium, or here in Kansas City with the Royals or the Chiefs, what I wish they would do is just say, “Hey everybody, we are a sports town. We think it’s important to have a sports team here, so we’re going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to build something.” And just leave it at that. It would be a defensible argument. You could argue whether it’s worth the expenditure, but at least everybody would be honest. But they don’t do that. They go the extra step and say, “And we’re going to make money doing it.” That’s where they mess everything up. That’s where they get the numbers wrong. Is it as simple as that, or am I missing something?

J.C. Bradbury (05:31)
Absolutely. I wish there was some honesty in these debates. The reality is that a lot of people who argue these things don’t actually believe the phony economic impact studies they put out. They do it for a couple of reasons. Number one, politically, it’s a winning issue — if you tell someone it’s good for them economically, they’re more likely to support it. But also, if you just argue it’s good for the community and we’re a sports town — okay, how much does it cost? A billion dollars. How much does that increase taxes? Three hundred dollars. Well, hold on, we’re not that much of a sports town. Think about how you make your own decisions. What kind of car do you want to drive? I want a Ferrari. Great. But to drive a Ferrari, you’d need to move into a two-bedroom apartment, never travel again, and eat ramen noodles. You know what — I’ll get the base model sedan. People make those kinds of decisions, and that’s one of the reasons they use false economic benefits — because once you start talking about social benefits, people look at the costs more closely, and it makes a lot less sense.

Patrick Tuohey (06:40)
I had your colleague Victor Matheson on a few weeks ago and we talked about this, specifically with the World Cup. I’ve also asked Neil Damas this question. In your experience, how good are journalists at reaching out to you and your colleagues to vet the numbers they’re being told by chambers of commerce or the city? Where are we now, and are we getting better?

J.C. Bradbury (07:14)
I think the situation is getting worse, and a lot of it is accidental. Newsrooms have gotten smaller and younger, so there’s less institutional knowledge. People don’t remember the last stadium being built, and they’re told to go cover this stadium story. They call a few local sources — who of course are members of the local chamber — and those people say it’s great. At best, they call a local economist who says it’s bad, and it ends up being a tie. But often they don’t even call the economist. That’s part of the nature of the news business, which is one of the reasons I think it’s so important to use social media and other mediums to get the word out. Even journalists trying to do their best often fall short. And journalists deserve some blame here — when I reach out to try to help them, they often get very defensive, and I think that needs to stop. I’m not just angry at journalists. Both my parents were journalists, and my first job was in a newsroom. I understand what’s going on.

Patrick Tuohey (08:19)
The previous segment, I talked about World Cup reporting. Local people put out outrageous economic development claims a year and a half ago, nobody questioned them, and journalists just repeated them — even though past experience hadn’t lived up to those claims. So what can we do to encourage journalists to reach out, or maybe just give them a primer on what economic impact studies look like and where the flaws are? Whether I’m looking in St. Louis, Kansas City, or around the country, they are all flawed in the same way.

J.C. Bradbury (08:56)
It’s important to always speak up. It’s easy to get tired and think you can’t keep doing it. When someone asks me to look through one of these studies, I tell them it’s not a real study — it’s a fake study. I try to spread that message. Part of the problem is that the big number is the story, and that’s what they want out there. The fact that it’s wrong later doesn’t matter. And sometimes people get mad at me because I’ll call out bad reporting. I do it not because I dislike journalists, but every time I’ve tried to be nice about it, I get told I don’t know what I’m talking about or that they don’t want to tell their boss they need a correction. I think it’s important for journalists to know that if they get it wrong, they’re going to get called on it — not to be mean, but to set the standard.

Patrick Tuohey (09:54)
And do a better job because policymakers and business owners are making decisions based on the numbers you’re putting out there. We see this with the World Cup — people were expecting much bigger crowds than they got. It’s not just a matter of being right. It’s a matter of being right so that people make decisions based on real information, not just projections. JC, I’m grateful for your time this morning. Thank you so much. We’ve been talking to J.C. Bradbury of Kennesaw State University. His book, This One Will Be Different, comes out at the end of July. We’ll be right back.

The post Why Stadium Deals Don’t Add Up with J.C. Bradbury appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The Kansas City Star recently published a story examining the city’s gun violence problem as Kansas City hosts matches during the World Cup.

The article raises a legitimate concern. Kansas City, Missouri, suffers from far too much violence. Recent shootings have again drawn national attention to a problem local leaders have struggled to address for years.

The Star largely frames that problem through the lens of Missouri’s gun laws. Missouri allows permit-less carry. It broadly preempts local firearm regulations. Legislative efforts to tighten gun restrictions have gone nowhere, even after highly publicized tragedies such as the Chiefs’ Super Bowl rally shooting.

Reasonable people can conclude that these policies contribute to violence.

But if we are serious about understanding why Kansas City experiences so much violence, there is an obvious question that deserves attention:

What about Kansas? The state line is not hundreds of miles away. It is literally a road.

Kansas has permit-less carry. Kansas does not require firearm registration. Kansas does not impose waiting periods. Kansas does not require universal background checks for private firearm sales. Kansas broadly preempts local governments from adopting their own firearm regulations.

In other words, Kansas and Missouri have remarkably similar firearm laws, yet the outcomes on violence are very different.

The Star notes that Kansas City, Missouri, averages roughly 30 homicides during June and July, compared with four in Kansas City, Kansas. That is a remarkable difference. Accounting for population, Kansas City, Missouri, still experiences roughly twice the homicide rate of Kansas City, Kansas.

If neighboring jurisdictions with similar firearm laws experience dramatically different homicide rates, serious observers should be interested in what else might explain the difference. They should certainly acknowledge it.

The question is not whether gun laws matter. The question is whether they are sufficient to explain the difference in homicide numbers. The Star asks the first question. It largely ignores the second.

The post If Gun Laws Explain Kansas City’s Violence, What Explains Kansas? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

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The post Keeping Kansas City Safe During the World Cup with Dimitrios Mastoras appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Now that the champagne corks have popped at Crown Center over the plans to build a ballpark there, it’s worth considering what comes next for Missouri and Kansas.

On the Missouri side, Kansas City ordinance 260339, passed on April 9, instructs the city manager to move ahead on all sorts of things regarding the deal. Section 7 provides for up to $250,000 for, among other things, “professional services, including but not limited to economic advisory services, financial advisory services, bond advisory services, legal services . . .”

That means the city is going to seek professional opinions on the deal’s feasibility. Who the city hires will tell us a lot about how committed it is to protecting taxpayers. As one person told me, “if they hire an architectural firm, we’ll know they’re not serious.”

The city has a history of relying on conflicted organizations to conduct studies, as it recently did with the World Cup. In 2016, the city paid CDFA—a trade group formed “to promote the common interest of Development Finance Agencies with respect to public policies and programs”—to measure the effectiveness of Kansas City’s subsidy culture. The laughable conclusion was “each incentive dollar invested generated $3.83 in additional tax revenue.”

In Kansas, taxpayers are still waiting on two things. First, they don’t know how big the STAR bond district will be. Previous reporting was a 293-square-mile district encompassing Wyandotte County and the western half of Johnson County. But it could be much, much bigger to make the deal pencil out. Once the district is set, the secretary of commerce is empowered to make it larger whenever he would like (see page 1) to capture more tax revenue.

Second, taxpayers are also waiting on Kansas to determine the base year, which is the year in which the state sales tax revenue is fixed, diverting every additional dollar within the district to the Chiefs’ developments. You might expect the base year to be 2026, when the legislature endorsed the measure, or whenever the project breaks ground. Or perhaps 2025, when the deal was agreed to.

But the deal actually allows the secretary of commerce to set the base year whenever he wants (see page 22). It could be set at 2015, meaning every state sales tax dollar generated over the amount collected in 2015 would go to the Chiefs.

In a deal this expensive for Kansas, the size of the district and the base year are likely to reignite howls of protest from all quarters.

As elected leaders in Topeka and Kansas City throw themselves self-congratulatory parties, the rest of us are faced with the bar tab. And the hangover.

The post Next Up on Chiefs and Royals Stadium Saga appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

With Kansas City preparing to host matches during the 2026 FIFA World Cup, Missouri lawmakers are considering a bill to simplify food truck licensing in Jackson County. The proposal would allow vendors licensed by the county to operate in any municipality without additional city permits.

The change would remove a common barrier: multiple permits just to cross a city boundary.

The idea makes sense. But if it will help entrepreneurs and visitors during the World Cup, why should the same principle not apply across Missouri? As the Squirrel Nut Zippers sang, “If it’s good enough for Grandad, its good enough for me.”

Food truck regulations vary widely by city. Vendors operating across a metro area may face requirements for multiple permits, fees, and regulatory approvals.

Show-Me Institute writers have written about these barriers for years. In 2019, we noted that St. Louis food trucks still faced significant regulatory constraints despite growing demand. Food trucks offer a flexible and relatively low-cost entry into the restaurant business, but local regulations can make that opportunity harder to pursue.

In some places, additional rules beyond health and sanitation standards function as a de facto ban on mobile vendors.

Health and safety regulations would remain under the proposal being considered in Jefferson City. Missouri already regulates food safety through inspections and sanitation standards administered by local health departments.

The real issue is duplication. Requiring vendors who already meet health standards to obtain a license in every municipality adds cost and delay without improving safety.

Every occupational license carries costs: higher prices for consumers, barriers to entry for workers, fewer providers, and lost time and money for licensees. The central policy question is whether those costs are justified by clear benefits to public safety or product quality.

Several Missouri communities have taken steps to loosen food truck restrictions in recent years. Clayton, for example, expanded opportunities for food trucks to operate at events and public gatherings while maintaining basic safety requirements.

Such changes recognize that mobile vendors are part of the broader restaurant ecosystem and often serve as a first step toward larger businesses.

Starting a small business often requires navigating numerous regulatory steps and fees. Reducing unnecessary barriers can make it easier for entrepreneurs to test new ideas and serve customers.

That flexibility helps explain the popularity of food trucks: vendors can move where demand is strongest, serve events, and test new concepts without the overhead of a traditional restaurant.

Major events like the World Cup highlight that advantage. When large numbers of visitors arrive, mobile vendors can help meet the temporary surge in demand for food and entertainment.

But the benefits of reducing unnecessary regulation should not depend on an international sporting event. If getting government out of the way helps vendors serve World Cup visitors in Kansas City, it should also help them serve customers across the rest of Missouri.

The post If Food Truck Reform Is Good for One County, It’s Good for All appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In a column for The Kansas City Star, I challenged the rosy claims of the alleged economic windfall from hosting the World Cup. Every group I contacted indicated they got the number from someone else. When I finally found the organization that generated the number, it did not respond.

That seems to be the standard procedure.

The Kansas City Business Journal tried to dig into how Kansas City’s tourism bureau concluded that 650,000 visitors would descend on the region. Thomas Friestad wrote: “Visit KC declined to share its specific methodology for estimating visitors, saying it is proprietary information.”

Blaise Mesa, writing for The Beacon, examined the economic impact claims being made by proponents of a new Chiefs stadium in Kansas. He ran into the same wall, writing, “The Beacon contacted the firm that calculated economic development data on the stadium, but they didn’t reply to requests for comment.”

It should be a red flag for even the most diehard supporters of these deals that those who promote the claims refuse to answer basic questions.

The post Extraordinary Economic Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence—Sports Edition appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

How bad is crime in Kansas City? If you believe recent international headlines, we’re a “Mad Max-style hellhole,” a reference to the post-apocalyptic movie franchise. Ouch.

I grant in the piece that the headline came from a news outlet known for being sensationalist, but as Kansas City prepares to host the World Cup in 2026, our international reputation is important.

Speaking to Pete Mundo on KCMO Talk Radio the morning of May 23, Mayor Quinton Lucas, just back from a junket to Qatar, said this [at 2:32]:

Of course the Qataris were very interested in saying, “we can send people over, free of charge, to come help you.” I’ll make sure I have a chat with [KC Police] Chief Stacey Graves and some of the others before we do that, but, [it’s a] well-resourced country.

That statement came right after a discussion about transportation, but Chief Graves does not handle city transportation, nor does she serve on the board of KC2026, the committee formed to organize efforts to host the 2026 FIFA event. It appears the mayors’ understanding was that the Qataris were expressing a security concern and offering to send assistance.

Federal law does not permit foreign nationals to exercise any police powers on U.S. soil. While there may be plenty of coordination among governments and their law enforcement agencies prior to events like the World Cup, I doubt that would be handled by the hosting city’s police chief.

Just as Mayor Lucas would have been in no position to coordinate security with a foreign entity, it’s possible that the Qatari making the offer was in no position to provide it. I don’t know.

What is clear, even if Lucas doesn’t realize the implication of the offer, is that Kansas City is seen internationally as a place that cannot provide public safety to its own citizens or international visitors. That won’t be solved by advertising on buses in London, but by competent management of city resources—something we have yet to see.

The post Is Kansas City a Public Safety Charity Case? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

There’s a long track record of inflated claims around the economic benefits of hosting major sporting events. Economists Robert Baade and Victor Matheson found that the 1994 World Cup resulted not in a $4 billion boost, as advertised, but in a net loss between $5.5 billion and $9.3 billion across host cities. Despite this, city officials—and their usual partners in the Chamber of Commerce and Downtown Council—continue to market the 2026 event as transformational for Kansas City.

A recent Kansas City Star article outlines the Small Business Storefront Vacancy Revitalization initiative, under which the city will offer up to $25,000 per year in rent subsidies to small businesses that occupy empty retail spaces. The goal is to fill downtown with activity and present a more vibrant environment to World Cup visitors.

But if the World Cup were the growth engine it’s advertised to be, wouldn’t businesses already be competing for these spaces?

The need for incentives suggests otherwise. Rather than a natural uptick in demand, the city appears to be staging vitality. Pop-up stores and subsidized art installations may look good for a few days, but they are not a substitute for long-term market viability. Officials point to similar programs in Seattle and San Francisco, yet even there, long-term results remain unclear.

Yes, some storefronts may light up temporarily. But if Kansas City genuinely wants to support small business, better options exist: streamline the permitting process, reduce regulatory barriers, address infrastructure needs, and improve public safety. These are structural reforms that support entrepreneurs regardless of tourist calendars.

Instead, city leaders appear to be following a familiar pattern: promote a high-profile event, rush to spend earmarked funds on short-term optics, and then dodge accountability when outcomes fall short.

If it hasn’t worked so far, why would anyone expect it to work in the future?

The post Kansas City’s World Cup Potemkin Village appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

A 2003 Clemson University study by economists Robert Baade and Victor Matheson puts this into stark perspective. They looked at the 1994 World Cup, hosted in the United States, and found something shocking: Instead of the $4 billion economic boost that event advocates promised, host cities actually lost between $5.5 billion and $9.3 billion. Let that sink in. Instead of making money, these cities were left holding the bag for billions in losses.

The report lays out the problem:

1. Stadium Spending is a Black Hole – FIFA demands that host nations build or upgrade multiple stadiums, often at obscene costs. South Korea and Japan spent $4 billion for the 2002 World Cup. Many of those stadiums are underused today, costing millions just to maintain.
2. The Tourists Don’t Come – One of the biggest myths is that these events bring in a wave of free-spending tourists. In reality, regular tourists stay away to avoid inflated prices and congestion. The net impact is often negative.
3. Jobs? What Jobs? – Yes, major events create work—but mostly low-paying, temporary jobs that vanish once the event is over. Meanwhile, businesses that don’t cater to event-goers—restaurants, retail, theaters—often see a drop in revenue.
4. FIFA (or the IOC, or the NFL) Walks Away with the Money – The real winner? The governing body that runs the event. FIFA collects billions in ticket sales and sponsorships, while host cities are stuck with the bill for security, infrastructure, and maintenance.

The World Cup is far from the only culprit. Cities and nations have been burned time and again. The 2016 Rio Olympics left Brazil with $13 billion in debt, abandoned venues, and zero lasting benefits. The 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics cost $50 billion, much of it wasted on corruption and vanity projects. The Super Bowl, despite constant hype, has been shown in multiple studies to provide a fraction of its promised economic impact.

Politicians and event boosters always paint the same rosy picture. They promise jobs, economic growth, and global prestige. But the reality, as study after study has shown, is that these mega-events rarely—if ever—pay off.

If a city really wants to strengthen its economy, it should focus on investing in infrastructure, public services, and policies that support small businesses and long-term growth. Chasing after one-time spectacles that benefit global organizations far more than local residents is a mistake.

So the next time you hear about a city bending over backward to host the World Cup, the Olympics, or any other mega event, ask the hard question: Who actually benefits? If history is any guide, it’s probably not the taxpayers.

The post Mega Events Fail to Deliver: World Cup Edition appeared first on Show-Me Institute.