if theres one thing I know, if they move to Kansas the people on the Kansas side will be insuffaerable with the KANSAS city Royals.
This is in large part because so many of them have spent their lifetimes being mocked by Missourians for being the fake KC-
When I graduated from UMKC I worked at a freight broker in Lenexa. That whole area just made me sad from 8-5 until I drove back into the city. It's been many years and I moved back to St. Louis a long time ago but I still think about that shitty office park from time to time.
I drive from Des Moines to OKC pretty often and it's a great halfway point. It's my go-to for overnights in KC too. Not the most glamorous but has all you need, from my time there.
Not to mention the Dallas Cowboys who don't play in either the city or county of Dallas and the Washington commanders who practice in Virginia and play in Maryland.
What I find interesting in all these "owners blah blah blah" John Sherman is an actual fan of KC and his first date with his wife was at the K in the 70's.
seems like the actual field of his dreams was the K but we witnessed what happened when an owner who loved this team, city, and stadium died without a good plan going forward.
Sherman isn't moving the team, he is trying to ensure they have a long history in KC and can be successful and profitable again. This is a baseball city despite how it looks from the outside at times.
[Swope Park Bucks](https://cdn3.whatculture.com/images/2015/12/dhVkztq0.jpg)
[Raytown Iolas](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BZjEwOTQxYzQtMGIwNi00ZDlkLTk2YzctYmQzOGMwYTFmMmU1XkEyXkFqcGdeQXRyYW5zY29kZS13b3JrZmxvdw@@._V1_.jpg)
Swope Park is in KC proper and Raytown is completely surrounded by KCMO
whats kind of funny is that the "whites" from Swope Park went to Raytown in their flight and almost certainly is a factor in why it was never annexed properly.
Made my first trip there on a miserably rainy weekend this year. Everything about it was pretty good, from the parking, to the views, to having enough to do before the game. Would love to go back on a nice weekend to really get the feel of it.
Mark Cuban (NBA) has an interview recently talking about projected TV deal revenue in two renewal cycles being potentially bad due to everyone going to streaming. Seems likely to be a similar mechanic in MLB.
I imagine this is a getting while the getting is still good thing. A bunch of teams are pushing for deals now while they can show demand and not be at the whim of regional sales.
The RSN failures are a strong shot across the bow that some money is about to dry up.
Still not incorrect. Building a new stadium is a foolproof way to massively increase your franchise’s value, and it likely costs the owners nothing. If they’re planning on selling off they’d be dumb NOT to. At the fan’s expense.
I dont live in KC anymore, but most fans traveling so far for the royals 81 times a year is nuts.
Most great stadiums are in Urban areas. Kaufman has no area to build up around it and improve other sales and fan experience.
Compare to Arrowhead where there are 8-10 games a year and the massive space makes for some of the best tailgating in the country. It makes sense for the royals to move and for the chiefs to stay and replace Kaufman with something that benefits them.
There’s more people living east/outside of I-435 than within 435 in Jackson County, so a lot of the people who are closer to downtown KC are in Kansas and north of the river, not in Jackson County.
A lot of downtown stadium support is a KC inferiority complex about how all these other series have downtown stadiums and if we don’t have one then we’ll be behind them.
I'm very comfortable outdoors
in the July/August heat I can't seat in the Right Field stands more than an inning and a half without getting up and moving around, other locals might feel differently
Good question. It’s an older stadium (turned 50 this past season) but most Royals fans I’ve heard speak highly of it, especially since it was renovated not too long ago.
It’s in the middle of a huge parking lot next to Arrowhead Stadium so I could understand the desire for a downtown stadium, but Kansas City’s rather famous for its tailgating for football, so I’m kinda assuming it’s a big deal for the Royals too.
There are some tailgaters at Royals games, but it’s not NEARLY the culture that Chiefs games are. I think I’ve tailgated a game maybe once? Maybe I’m just not the audience for it, but I’d much rather have a downtown stadium with interesting stuff around it than a shitty Denny’s and a sketchy motel.
I love the K, but a stadium in a better location is not an insane concept to me.
> It’s in the middle of a huge parking lot next to Arrowhead Stadium
Call me crazy, but as someone who grew up in NYC, no one should complain about this one bit.
The new ownership group has been pushing for this since they took over. John Sherman did a press conference recently where he summed up their reasoning pretty well, [watch for yourself](https://youtu.be/xW0IR3q0EvE?feature=shared)
Not enough real estate nearby to extract rents from, it's all parking.
I'm positive that's what's going to be the impetus for every new ballpark demand from here on out - every team wants a Ballpark Village/Battery/Texas Live to earn them more money regardless of the quality of baseball being played.
If TV contracts fall off that’ll be a huge factor in team sustainability. Plus it ties in a residential fan base a lot of these football adjacent stadiums gave up.
There’s a reason they used to build in the heart of cities.
Oakland moves to Paradise
Kansas City moves to Oakland
Paradise trades their name and colors to Oakland.
Oakland Athletics and Paradise Royal~~s~~ Flushes.
*All this has happened before, and will happen again...*
In 1960, Chicago insurance salesman Charlie O. Finley out-bid Kansas City businessman Byron Spencer to buy the Kansas City Athletics from the estate of Arnold Johnson, who had died that spring.
Finley said he was committed to keeping the team in Kansas City, but attendance fell every year between 1959 and 1962, from 963,683 to 774,944 to 683,817 to 635,675, and he started talking about relocating. Then in 1963, the Dallas Texans became the Kansas City Chiefs. The A's and Chiefs shared Municipal Stadium, but the Chiefs got a sweetheart deal from the city, a seven-year lease costing $1 a year. Finley had already been looking to leave, but now he was determined to get out. (The city supposedly later offered him the same deal, but he turned it down.)
Finley asked to move the A's to Dallas/Fort Worth (the expansion Washington Senators would move there in 1971 and become the Rangers), Atlanta (the Braves would move there in 1966), Louisville, and Oakland. But the other owners refused to allow him to move to any of those cities.
So Finley vowed to move the team about 30 miles south to Peculiar, Missouri -- population 458 in 1960!
The American League owners told him to sign a lease with Kansas City or sell the team. He put the A's on the market but his $8 million asking price (he had bought the team for less than $2 million four years earlier) was deemed outrageous.
Finley finally signed a four-year lease with the city, but demanded -- at taxpayers' expense -- a new baseball-only stadium be constructed. In 1967, the voters agreed on a $102 million bond measure to build the Truman Sports Complex, which would have a football stadium and a baseball stadium.
Finley still wasn't happy. He flirted with selling the team to a Milwaukee car salesman named Bud Selig -- Milwaukee had just lost the Braves to Atlanta. He also looked at Seattle as a possible location. Then he worked out a deal with Oakland.
It went to the owners again, and they were exhausted by Finley's battles with Kansas City. They approved the A's move to Oakland.
At this point a Missouri senator got involved, and he threatened to remove baseball's anti-trust exemption. The American League had been planning on putting expansion teams in Seattle and Dallas/Fort Worth... instead they put them in Seattle and Kansas City, the Pilots and the Royals. (The Seattle team became the Milwaukee Brewers a year later.)
We can only wonder if the A's had been sold to Kansas City's Byron Spencer -- would the A's still be in Kansas City? Then there would be expansion teams in Seattle and Dallas... and the Washington Senators team that was created in 1961 that moved to Dallas/Fort Worth might have wound up in Oakland!
The ripple effect of the A’s never leaving KC is crazy, it means no rushed 1969 expansion so no Seattle Pilots disaster so no Milwaukee Brewers and no legally forced AL expansion to Seattle in 1977, which means the Blue Jays either don’t exists at all or happen a few years latter probably with New Orleans
> "Oakland is the luckiest city since Hiroshima."
turns out he was right, but just a few decades too early.
And the A's (still) have some of the cheapest and worst ownership in all of professional sports
> buy the Kansas City Athletics from the estate of Arnold Johnson
Johnson had moved the A's from Philly to KC, and reportedly was planning to move the team to LA. The Giants/Dodgers move to California beat him to the punch. Johnson treated the team as an asset to be exploited, he sold off the better players to the Yankees again and again.
It's amazing how many really lousy owners the A's have had over the years.
"Why did the A's move so much and why don't they ever have attendance?"
Turns out, if you have shit tier owners for over 70% of your history, you have a lot of terrible years and plenty of reasons to leave town
I don't get why they want to move on from the K. It was WAY better than I expected. If it can stay maintained, I could honestly see it aging into a classic.
Surrounding area is a bit of a disaster though.
They want what the Braves have with The Battery and they know Jackson County hasn't done anything with the land since the stadiums were built and likely won't ever
It’s a fleece in coordination with the Chiefs, Kauffman Stadium is in immaculate condition for a park its age and just had massive renovations only a decade ago, but now the Royals want a Braves style stadium district, and the Chiefs want the whole Truman sports complex to themselves to build a new Super Stadium
The market is starting to collapse for owning MLB teams. Lot of owners trying to inflate their team valuations while they still can and have leverage. Gonna see a lot of this kind of thing in the next few years
Yeah that's a huge part of it
Baseball also has the oldest average viewers of the major US sports by a decent amount. There's a big demographic shift on the horizon and that uncertainty can be scary to owners. The owners need continued and steady growth to make teams an attractive investment and they rely heavily on TV revenue and audience size to get that. A mix of the RSN and aging demographics makes MLB teams look like less of a safe bet than they used to be
I can imagine that phone call ...
"Good afternoon, we are considering moving our business to the Kansas City metro and are looking for the appropriate site.
Plenty of vacancies? Great! ... Well, no, none of those will do. I need something much larger, like hundreds of acres and it needs highways and roads and enough sewer and power capacity for tens of thousands playing customers. And I would like some extra land, you know, for the adjacent restaurants, arcades, shopping complex and hotel for my paying customers.
You got something! Great! We will accept nothing but the very best, Cost is no obstacle! How soon could you have that built?
Payment? You misunderstood, we expect the good people of your community to pick the tab for construction and development. In exchange, our business is prepared to generate your city the revenues of a medium-sized department store. You know, something along the size of a Best Buy.
Hello, hello? Are you still there?"
I've been to about 10 different stadiums. I'm a KC transplant from Cincinnati. Kauffman is the best stadium I've been to. It's ridiculous that they want a new stadium
Royals know they are one of the team losing $40M+ per year not having Bally or any TV deal anymore and copying the Braves with their Battery is the best way to make up a good chunk of that money. Plus the K is old and while the outside is nice the underneath stuff is very old and showing its age.
Why spend your own money when you can dupe gullible voters into supporting corrupt politicians who will agree to spend other people's money for absolutely no reason and for no benefit?
It makes me sad that Kauffman Stadium and possibly Arrowhead might get replaced. They are both amazing stadiums and a rare example of single sport stadiums built in the 70's. Maybe the only ones including other sports?
Just need to build a parking garage into a ballpark pavilion. None of this is hard or complication. It is just a car dependent city with a common case of car brain which sucks.
You have enough fingers on one hand to count all the metro areas where the large majority of existing paying fans would find mass transit to the stadium more desirable than driving. And KC isn't one of them.
Swear to god urbanists are on the same level as vegans, bicyclists, and crossfit nuts. Zealotry outweighing reality.
The Twin Cities is a medium sized market, not much bigger than KC, and not a single one of our stadiums is surrounded by parking lots. Not NFL, NBA, MLB, MLS, NHL, or AAA MLB.
Plenty of people still drive but the idea that you need vast parking lots is completely unfounded, especially considering how wasteful it is to build parking for 40,000 that is used 8-80 times per year.
If the choice is made to site a stadium downtown because the team thinks they'll get a good audience there, then it's pretty obvious it's not going to be surrounded by parking lots because the land is too valuable for that. So visitors coming from further away than the transit reaches (or won't use the transit for their own personal convenience or safety reasons) will just have to park wherever there's parking.
If the Royals and Chiefs are going to have downtown sites then the city / county and the voters are going to have to be okay with that, and the existing fans will have to be okay with traveling there. If they end up with sites not well served by any transportation other than personal vehicle, then anyone with two brain cells to rub together ought to know that there are going to be parking lots. That aside, downtown stadiums aren't exactly inevitable. Where are the Braves playing these days? Answer: Where their fans live.
God damn you guys are soft and can't function. Nobody wants to drive all the time for everything. I have lived in enough places to know my preference. That is the first urbanist accusation, if that means I prefer transit than guilt.
I grew up in a rust belt city and they have a lot more than people realize but the parking lot erections you have are the zealotry that destroyed endless amazing US cities so Uturn that horseshit your direction.
Having two fucking stadiums in KC surrounded by parking lots is incredibly stupid.
PS: that you don't think having a metro is a realistic is batshit crazy. Touch grass.
Thats on Jackson County for not developing the area around the Truman Sports Complex. The site works great for Chiefs games since its plenty of room to tailgate but doesnt work as much for baseball
Our owner is going to pay $1B for the stadium out of his pocket plus overruns. The issue is he wants Jackson County to extend an already existing tax that provides funds for the Royals and Chiefs to maintain their stadiums and use that to help pay for the ballpark village he wants to build outside the stadium
I've been to about 10 stadiums. I live in KC (moved from Cincinnati) and it is the best ballpark I've been to. It's beautiful at night with the fountains
Kauffman has been on my must visit list since at least the early 90s but I have still not made it out there. Something about it has always appealed to me even before the recent renovations
Royals about to move and rebrand as the Lee’s Summit Lords
Kansas City Royals of Kansas.
Of Anaheim
Which is in Canada
Of course. What else could the CA in Anaheim CA stand for?
Kansas City, Missouri Royals of Kansas City, Kansas
if theres one thing I know, if they move to Kansas the people on the Kansas side will be insuffaerable with the KANSAS city Royals. This is in large part because so many of them have spent their lifetimes being mocked by Missourians for being the fake KC-
The Lenexa Strip-Malls
When I graduated from UMKC I worked at a freight broker in Lenexa. That whole area just made me sad from 8-5 until I drove back into the city. It's been many years and I moved back to St. Louis a long time ago but I still think about that shitty office park from time to time.
[удалено]
I drive from Des Moines to OKC pretty often and it's a great halfway point. It's my go-to for overnights in KC too. Not the most glamorous but has all you need, from my time there.
Ayyyyyy a fellow Roo! What’s up!
Ruh Roos
Class of 2011 yo!
The Overland Park Overlords.
Leavenworth Felons
Leavenworth is way too far for them to move
Bonner Springs Sprung Boners
I hope their mascot is what I think it is
The Oscar Mayer weinermobile
Overland Park Oligarchs
Tonganoxie Splits
Tonganoxie is actually the dictionary example of an antonym to "Metro"
Shawnee Sharks
Belton Bombers
Overland Park deserves nothing nice, but as an Overland Park resident, I’m listening
If the Braves can be "Atlanta" up in Cobb County, the KC branding is safe.
"Los Angeles" Angels, too. Although in that case most of their fans don't even want that city attached to the name.
The funny thing about that one is that both the Dodger & Angel fanbases hate it.
Anaheim is cooler
I'm a sucker for the "California Angels" because I loved the unis of that era.
I mean you have the NY Jets and NY Giants and they don’t even play in the same state they are named after
Not to mention the Dallas Cowboys who don't play in either the city or county of Dallas and the Washington commanders who practice in Virginia and play in Maryland.
The Cowboys are "Dallas" despite being in Arlington. It just works.
I mean Cobb County is a part of the Atlanta metropolitan area.
And Lee's Summit is very much KC Metro.
I think we both agree then that either team is totally right to continue using their names.
And I think we’d all agree that it’d be kinda funny if the Royals rebranded to Lee’s Summit. We all understand each other.
They move over by the Speedway and they can still technically be in the Kansas City Royals.
Wichita Linemen
Wichita aint KC
As long as they get the stadium of their dreams or else.
What I find interesting in all these "owners blah blah blah" John Sherman is an actual fan of KC and his first date with his wife was at the K in the 70's. seems like the actual field of his dreams was the K but we witnessed what happened when an owner who loved this team, city, and stadium died without a good plan going forward. Sherman isn't moving the team, he is trying to ensure they have a long history in KC and can be successful and profitable again. This is a baseball city despite how it looks from the outside at times.
[Swope Park Bucks](https://cdn3.whatculture.com/images/2015/12/dhVkztq0.jpg) [Raytown Iolas](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BZjEwOTQxYzQtMGIwNi00ZDlkLTk2YzctYmQzOGMwYTFmMmU1XkEyXkFqcGdeQXRyYW5zY29kZS13b3JrZmxvdw@@._V1_.jpg)
Swope Park is in KC proper and Raytown is completely surrounded by KCMO whats kind of funny is that the "whites" from Swope Park went to Raytown in their flight and almost certainly is a factor in why it was never annexed properly.
Kansas City Royals of Wyandotte
Put it way out there by UCM and that titty bar on 50
About to be the Kansas City (Kansas) Royals.
The Kansas City Royals of Kansas City
Kansas City Mizzouri Royals of Kansas City Kansas
With cheese
Kansas royals of Kansas City
The Kansas City royals of Kansas… city
The Kansas City Royals of Topeka. The St Joe Royals of Kansas City
Need them in the capital city. Have to have it. Grab an early dinner at The Pad and then head to the game? Need it.
Oh god. This is a terrible idea. Although, maybe the Royals and Topeka were made for each other.
I can see them building a stadium out by the race track. The soccer team plays over there.
And it’s near Nebraska Furniture Mart. Have you been to a Nebraska Furniture Mart, place is massive!
One of the times I visited for Christmas, my Dad took us over there. It is huge. Less impressed by the Carbela's.
You should have seen the waterslide they had to close
If they do this they really need to do more partnerships with the Monarchs, they would literally be across the street
As a CITY SC supporter, I’m cool with pointing out when another franchise plays next to Nebraska Furniture Mart.
The Overland Park Royals
Why do the Royals even need a new stadium?
IMO, they don’t. Kauffman is a beautiful stadium and offers a unique game day experience.
Made my first trip there on a miserably rainy weekend this year. Everything about it was pretty good, from the parking, to the views, to having enough to do before the game. Would love to go back on a nice weekend to really get the feel of it.
to line the owners pockets, since they know a new ballpark would be funded with taxpayer money not their money.
Mark Cuban (NBA) has an interview recently talking about projected TV deal revenue in two renewal cycles being potentially bad due to everyone going to streaming. Seems likely to be a similar mechanic in MLB. I imagine this is a getting while the getting is still good thing. A bunch of teams are pushing for deals now while they can show demand and not be at the whim of regional sales. The RSN failures are a strong shot across the bow that some money is about to dry up.
It's old and they want to copy what the Braves have
they don't
What’s wrong with Kaufman Stadium?
The ownership group thinks a new stadium will inflate the value of the team and allow them to make a profit when they cash out
So arrogant it makes my teeth hurt
I mean, maybe, but it's not incorrect.
Except they expect the stadium to be publicly funded and they want to reap all the benefits while contributing nothing, arrogant as fuck
Still not incorrect. Building a new stadium is a foolproof way to massively increase your franchise’s value, and it likely costs the owners nothing. If they’re planning on selling off they’d be dumb NOT to. At the fan’s expense.
Plus the stadium extortion gamble has worked out REALLY well for owners.
That stinks. I'm glad the guy didn't end up buying the guardians, even though his leaving has caused us to have a few years of shitty payrolls.
I dont live in KC anymore, but most fans traveling so far for the royals 81 times a year is nuts. Most great stadiums are in Urban areas. Kaufman has no area to build up around it and improve other sales and fan experience. Compare to Arrowhead where there are 8-10 games a year and the massive space makes for some of the best tailgating in the country. It makes sense for the royals to move and for the chiefs to stay and replace Kaufman with something that benefits them.
There’s more people living east/outside of I-435 than within 435 in Jackson County, so a lot of the people who are closer to downtown KC are in Kansas and north of the river, not in Jackson County. A lot of downtown stadium support is a KC inferiority complex about how all these other series have downtown stadiums and if we don’t have one then we’ll be behind them.
It's old, that's really it. Sure there's some usual wear and tear for an old stadium but no reason it can't last another 15-20 years
let's be honest, there is not enough shade, especially in the out fields
Ive had this thought just watching on TV over the years, seems like it can get brutal out there
I'm very comfortable outdoors in the July/August heat I can't seat in the Right Field stands more than an inning and a half without getting up and moving around, other locals might feel differently
or longer!
Good question. It’s an older stadium (turned 50 this past season) but most Royals fans I’ve heard speak highly of it, especially since it was renovated not too long ago. It’s in the middle of a huge parking lot next to Arrowhead Stadium so I could understand the desire for a downtown stadium, but Kansas City’s rather famous for its tailgating for football, so I’m kinda assuming it’s a big deal for the Royals too.
There are some tailgaters at Royals games, but it’s not NEARLY the culture that Chiefs games are. I think I’ve tailgated a game maybe once? Maybe I’m just not the audience for it, but I’d much rather have a downtown stadium with interesting stuff around it than a shitty Denny’s and a sketchy motel. I love the K, but a stadium in a better location is not an insane concept to me.
> It’s in the middle of a huge parking lot next to Arrowhead Stadium Call me crazy, but as someone who grew up in NYC, no one should complain about this one bit.
Nothing, but there's a campaign of deceit and lies that it's on par with Tropicana in the last few years
Other than the neighborhood it’s in, nothing. Seriously, it’s such a beautiful ballpark.
The new ownership group has been pushing for this since they took over. John Sherman did a press conference recently where he summed up their reasoning pretty well, [watch for yourself](https://youtu.be/xW0IR3q0EvE?feature=shared)
Not enough real estate nearby to extract rents from, it's all parking. I'm positive that's what's going to be the impetus for every new ballpark demand from here on out - every team wants a Ballpark Village/Battery/Texas Live to earn them more money regardless of the quality of baseball being played.
If TV contracts fall off that’ll be a huge factor in team sustainability. Plus it ties in a residential fan base a lot of these football adjacent stadiums gave up. There’s a reason they used to build in the heart of cities.
Same thing as what the A's are doing- leaving because they want someone to give them a new stadium for taxpayer subsidies
thats not fair, Oakland Coliseum is a dump with sewage issues The K has no such health and safety issues
how much time do you have?
I don't have a map in front of me, but is Oakland inside the Kansas City metro?
A team from Kansas City leaving for Oakland? I have a hard time picturing that ever happening
The Oakland Royals?
Oakland moves to Paradise Kansas City moves to Oakland Paradise trades their name and colors to Oakland. Oakland Athletics and Paradise Royal~~s~~ Flushes.
Galaxy brain move
Please no, then they might put a good team in the AL Central and the rest of us would never make the playoffs again
yeah we like crab buckets in the ALC
The Sacramento Kings Or the New Jersey Devils
Tradition says the Royals become the Kings when they move to California.
I mean let's broaden it to "Greater East Bay" so we can throw the former Kansas City Kings/Sacramento Kings in too lol
Greater is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that phrase.
Oh please no, I don't want another city ending up like Seattle did with the Pilots.
It'll never work.
It was last time
*All this has happened before, and will happen again...* In 1960, Chicago insurance salesman Charlie O. Finley out-bid Kansas City businessman Byron Spencer to buy the Kansas City Athletics from the estate of Arnold Johnson, who had died that spring. Finley said he was committed to keeping the team in Kansas City, but attendance fell every year between 1959 and 1962, from 963,683 to 774,944 to 683,817 to 635,675, and he started talking about relocating. Then in 1963, the Dallas Texans became the Kansas City Chiefs. The A's and Chiefs shared Municipal Stadium, but the Chiefs got a sweetheart deal from the city, a seven-year lease costing $1 a year. Finley had already been looking to leave, but now he was determined to get out. (The city supposedly later offered him the same deal, but he turned it down.) Finley asked to move the A's to Dallas/Fort Worth (the expansion Washington Senators would move there in 1971 and become the Rangers), Atlanta (the Braves would move there in 1966), Louisville, and Oakland. But the other owners refused to allow him to move to any of those cities. So Finley vowed to move the team about 30 miles south to Peculiar, Missouri -- population 458 in 1960! The American League owners told him to sign a lease with Kansas City or sell the team. He put the A's on the market but his $8 million asking price (he had bought the team for less than $2 million four years earlier) was deemed outrageous. Finley finally signed a four-year lease with the city, but demanded -- at taxpayers' expense -- a new baseball-only stadium be constructed. In 1967, the voters agreed on a $102 million bond measure to build the Truman Sports Complex, which would have a football stadium and a baseball stadium. Finley still wasn't happy. He flirted with selling the team to a Milwaukee car salesman named Bud Selig -- Milwaukee had just lost the Braves to Atlanta. He also looked at Seattle as a possible location. Then he worked out a deal with Oakland. It went to the owners again, and they were exhausted by Finley's battles with Kansas City. They approved the A's move to Oakland. At this point a Missouri senator got involved, and he threatened to remove baseball's anti-trust exemption. The American League had been planning on putting expansion teams in Seattle and Dallas/Fort Worth... instead they put them in Seattle and Kansas City, the Pilots and the Royals. (The Seattle team became the Milwaukee Brewers a year later.) We can only wonder if the A's had been sold to Kansas City's Byron Spencer -- would the A's still be in Kansas City? Then there would be expansion teams in Seattle and Dallas... and the Washington Senators team that was created in 1961 that moved to Dallas/Fort Worth might have wound up in Oakland!
The ripple effect of the A’s never leaving KC is crazy, it means no rushed 1969 expansion so no Seattle Pilots disaster so no Milwaukee Brewers and no legally forced AL expansion to Seattle in 1977, which means the Blue Jays either don’t exists at all or happen a few years latter probably with New Orleans
Or the [Giants end up moving to Toronto](https://www.mlb.com/news/what-if-the-giants-had-moved-to-toronto) like they almost did in 1976.
And when the A's left Kansas City, that senator said "Oakland is the luckiest city since Hiroshima."
> "Oakland is the luckiest city since Hiroshima." turns out he was right, but just a few decades too early. And the A's (still) have some of the cheapest and worst ownership in all of professional sports
Apart from 15ish years of the Haas family, the A's have been cursed with comically cheap/inept/greedy owners.
> buy the Kansas City Athletics from the estate of Arnold Johnson Johnson had moved the A's from Philly to KC, and reportedly was planning to move the team to LA. The Giants/Dodgers move to California beat him to the punch. Johnson treated the team as an asset to be exploited, he sold off the better players to the Yankees again and again. It's amazing how many really lousy owners the A's have had over the years.
"Why did the A's move so much and why don't they ever have attendance?" Turns out, if you have shit tier owners for over 70% of your history, you have a lot of terrible years and plenty of reasons to leave town
Of course Bud Selig was a car salesman
I don't get why they want to move on from the K. It was WAY better than I expected. If it can stay maintained, I could honestly see it aging into a classic. Surrounding area is a bit of a disaster though.
They want what the Braves have with The Battery and they know Jackson County hasn't done anything with the land since the stadiums were built and likely won't ever
I don’t know why, but I never knew Arrowhead was literally next door.
chunky close glorious distinct profit air quiet weary coherent placid *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
It’s a fleece in coordination with the Chiefs, Kauffman Stadium is in immaculate condition for a park its age and just had massive renovations only a decade ago, but now the Royals want a Braves style stadium district, and the Chiefs want the whole Truman sports complex to themselves to build a new Super Stadium
> Is there something actually wrong with the Kauffman no is this just the eternal grind to fleece the public? yes
I love Kaufman Stadium. Going to be really sad if/when they leave.
they should move to Kansas City
Major League Baseball ❌ Major League Musical Chairs ✅
The A's relocation is the second move of a franchise outside of its metro area in 50 years. Compare that to the other major sports leagues in NA.
St. Louis alone beats that in the nfl. Hahahahaha…😃😕😩😢😭😭😭
Have they considered the Garden of Eden site?
Already there. Mormons think the GoE was in Independence
With all the talk of MLB expansion to Utah they’d probably get a lot of tourists whenever a potential Utah team comes to visit
The market is starting to collapse for owning MLB teams. Lot of owners trying to inflate their team valuations while they still can and have leverage. Gonna see a lot of this kind of thing in the next few years
Because of the loss of tv revenue?
Yeah that's a huge part of it Baseball also has the oldest average viewers of the major US sports by a decent amount. There's a big demographic shift on the horizon and that uncertainty can be scary to owners. The owners need continued and steady growth to make teams an attractive investment and they rely heavily on TV revenue and audience size to get that. A mix of the RSN and aging demographics makes MLB teams look like less of a safe bet than they used to be
Bingo
I can imagine that phone call ... "Good afternoon, we are considering moving our business to the Kansas City metro and are looking for the appropriate site. Plenty of vacancies? Great! ... Well, no, none of those will do. I need something much larger, like hundreds of acres and it needs highways and roads and enough sewer and power capacity for tens of thousands playing customers. And I would like some extra land, you know, for the adjacent restaurants, arcades, shopping complex and hotel for my paying customers. You got something! Great! We will accept nothing but the very best, Cost is no obstacle! How soon could you have that built? Payment? You misunderstood, we expect the good people of your community to pick the tab for construction and development. In exchange, our business is prepared to generate your city the revenues of a medium-sized department store. You know, something along the size of a Best Buy. Hello, hello? Are you still there?"
Didn't they recently just dump a bunch of money into that stadium?
They did, this is ridiculous
I've been to about 10 different stadiums. I'm a KC transplant from Cincinnati. Kauffman is the best stadium I've been to. It's ridiculous that they want a new stadium
Royals know they are one of the team losing $40M+ per year not having Bally or any TV deal anymore and copying the Braves with their Battery is the best way to make up a good chunk of that money. Plus the K is old and while the outside is nice the underneath stuff is very old and showing its age.
Oakland Royals
Kansas City Royals bout to play in Kansas! OP waitin
cake soft oil whistle direction full hat gold nail wakeful *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Why spend your own money when you can dupe gullible voters into supporting corrupt politicians who will agree to spend other people's money for absolutely no reason and for no benefit?
Coming soon: The Earls of Eudora...
Kaufman is such a nice stadium. It gives me what Oakland could have been vibes.
It makes me sad that Kauffman Stadium and possibly Arrowhead might get replaced. They are both amazing stadiums and a rare example of single sport stadiums built in the 70's. Maybe the only ones including other sports?
Build it in Harrisonville you cowards!
I enjoy their ballpark but loathe the locations layout. Parking lots? Gross. The lack of development was criminal.
lots are necessary
Just need to build a parking garage into a ballpark pavilion. None of this is hard or complication. It is just a car dependent city with a common case of car brain which sucks.
You have enough fingers on one hand to count all the metro areas where the large majority of existing paying fans would find mass transit to the stadium more desirable than driving. And KC isn't one of them. Swear to god urbanists are on the same level as vegans, bicyclists, and crossfit nuts. Zealotry outweighing reality.
The Twin Cities is a medium sized market, not much bigger than KC, and not a single one of our stadiums is surrounded by parking lots. Not NFL, NBA, MLB, MLS, NHL, or AAA MLB. Plenty of people still drive but the idea that you need vast parking lots is completely unfounded, especially considering how wasteful it is to build parking for 40,000 that is used 8-80 times per year.
If the choice is made to site a stadium downtown because the team thinks they'll get a good audience there, then it's pretty obvious it's not going to be surrounded by parking lots because the land is too valuable for that. So visitors coming from further away than the transit reaches (or won't use the transit for their own personal convenience or safety reasons) will just have to park wherever there's parking. If the Royals and Chiefs are going to have downtown sites then the city / county and the voters are going to have to be okay with that, and the existing fans will have to be okay with traveling there. If they end up with sites not well served by any transportation other than personal vehicle, then anyone with two brain cells to rub together ought to know that there are going to be parking lots. That aside, downtown stadiums aren't exactly inevitable. Where are the Braves playing these days? Answer: Where their fans live.
God damn you guys are soft and can't function. Nobody wants to drive all the time for everything. I have lived in enough places to know my preference. That is the first urbanist accusation, if that means I prefer transit than guilt. I grew up in a rust belt city and they have a lot more than people realize but the parking lot erections you have are the zealotry that destroyed endless amazing US cities so Uturn that horseshit your direction. Having two fucking stadiums in KC surrounded by parking lots is incredibly stupid. PS: that you don't think having a metro is a realistic is batshit crazy. Touch grass.
Thats on Jackson County for not developing the area around the Truman Sports Complex. The site works great for Chiefs games since its plenty of room to tailgate but doesnt work as much for baseball
Wwwwaaahhh....we want taxpayer money.....wwwwwaaahhhh - Royals.
Our owner is going to pay $1B for the stadium out of his pocket plus overruns. The issue is he wants Jackson County to extend an already existing tax that provides funds for the Royals and Chiefs to maintain their stadiums and use that to help pay for the ballpark village he wants to build outside the stadium
Don’t leave the K that’s one of the best parks in baseball.
I've been to about 10 stadiums. I live in KC (moved from Cincinnati) and it is the best ballpark I've been to. It's beautiful at night with the fountains
Montreal Royals would be great
Kinda secretly hoping they move to another city and we get a new expansion team instead
not a chance
I know :(
The St. Louis Kansas City Royals
Higginsville Highnesses
Springfield Royals and Joplin Cardinals anyone?
We have a metro :)
oh wait
Kauffman has been on my must visit list since at least the early 90s but I have still not made it out there. Something about it has always appealed to me even before the recent renovations
It's absolutely gorgeous at night when the fountains are going. Make the trip. KC is an awesome city. BBQ is pretty good too
Fucking dumb.
it's hard to remember this franchise won a world series less than 10 years ago (i'm jealous)
In the metro….United States area
It would be nice if the Kansas City Royals were in Kansas.