The Chiefs’ Move From Missouri to Kansas Is More Complicated Than Many Fans Realize

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – It’s Week 1 in Kansas City. Monday Night Football.

It’s time for Patrick Mahomes’s return from a pair of torn ligaments in his left knee. The smell of barbeque is in the humid air, with a heat index of 97° and a scorching sun beating down on the aged asphalt around Arrowhead Stadium. Nobody minds.

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In this moment, all is right with the world. The Chiefs are back. The smokers are cranking and the beers are flowing. And in a few years, this space will be empty on football Sundays, a relic of what once was. A crumbling monument to the past.

Come 2031, the Chiefs plan to move into a new, $3 billion stadium across the state line in Kansas, financed 60% by public money. The new place will be a glittering palace with ample parking lot space for tailgaters and more than 70,000 seats under a fully enclosed roof featuring translucent ETFE panels. The field will likely consist of natural grass, with the stadium capable of hosting Super Bowls and Final Fours, World Cups and year-round concerts. It’ll be designed by the local architecture firm MANICA, which also produced Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas and the new Nissan Stadium in Nashville, among many other venues around the globe.

The design renderings showcase a wonder compared to Arrowhead Stadium, the third-oldest venue in the NFL behind Soldier Field (Chicago) and Lambeau Field (Green Bay). Still, the idea of moving out of a building which has housed every Chiefs home game since 1972 isn’t easily received.

“A lot of mixed feelings,” says Joe O’Flaherty, a 62-year-old fan who had season tickets for 20 years and grew up in Kansas City. “On one hand, I understand the economics of things and how we have to kind of keep up with the Joneses, so to speak. And these stadiums are important elements to a franchise’s ability to pay [Patrick] Mahomes and do all that type of stuff. But this place is just so special. I really thought for a long time that this would kind of be like a Lambeau Field type of situation, that they would just figure out a way to maintain it, build around it. In this city, this part of town is not a vibrant part of town. It never has been, and I don’t know if it ever will be. So I see both sides of it, but if I was making a decision, I’d try to figure out a way to make it continue to work.”

“If I had my druthers, I would like them to stay here forever,” says Tim Thompson, also 62 years old and a Kansas City native who travels back from Baltimore twice per year for games. “I understand things change, and I guess time marches on. … I went to a lot of games [at Municipal Stadium] as a little kid, and [my parents] probably thought this was a mistake coming way out here to the suburbs, and it turned out to be great. So I’m going to try to give progress a chance and think that it’s going to be good. It kind of bothers me that it will be a dome. I don’t know that we’ll ever have the mystique that we have now, and it makes me a little sad.”

Until recently, Arrowhead had more aura than actual moments. The Chiefs began playing there in 1972 and didn’t host a playoff game until ’91. Until Mahomes became the starter in 2018, Kansas City had a dismal 2–6 postseason record at Arrowhead, never hosting an AFC championship game. With Mahomes, the magic has been ever-present. The Chiefs are 12–2 in home playoff games, and have hosted six AFC title games. Arrowhead became the center of the football world, a regular stop for the type of prime-time games networks would fight over.

Regardless, the future is in Kansas. Olathe, to be exact. The franchise is moving its headquarters and practice facility there, where $1 billion will be invested in those endeavors alongside space for hotels, offices and residential buildings, and entertainment, including shopping and dining.

The new stadium will go on a 236-acre space at the corner of 126th Street and State Avenue in Kansas City, a place where MANICA will bring its acoustical engineers in hopes of making the new stadium as loud or louder than the current building. No small feat. Arrowhead is the Guinness Book of World Record holder for the loudest outdoor stadium on earth, reaching 142.2 decibels in 2014.

One of the big issues with the new stadium? The idea of crossing the state line.

Kansas City is a 14-county area which has been divided since its founding in 1838. Twenty-three years later, the Civil War began. Kansas was a free state, rebuking slavery. Missouri didn’t leave the union, but saw many citizens fight for the Confederates as pro-slavery soldiers. The result is a bitterness between Kansas and Missouri that has resonated for generations.

With the Chiefs moving from Missouri-where they’ve played since relocating from Dallas for the 1963 season-to Kansas, civic pride and animosity toward the other side of the line has bubbled up, albeit in a far less impactful fashion.

“It doesn’t bother me too much,” O’Flaherty says. “I didn’t go to Missouri or Kansas [for college], but I do have some friends where they’ve told me they will never go to a Chiefs game again because they’re going to Kansas. To me, it just boggles my mind. This community is a great community, but that state line is a problem. We’re divisive. We could be so much more together on some certain things.”

Kansas City is the only NFL city divided by a state line, but the issue of crossing boundaries isn’t a new one. In 1973, New York was so annoyed that the Giants were building a new stadium in New Jersey that the city terminated their lease at Yankee Stadium early, forcing them to play 12 home games at the Yale Bowl in Connecticut before going to Giants Stadium in ’76. Ten years later, when the Giants won the Super Bowl, New York refused to hold a parade.

More recently, the Bears are playing Indiana and Illinois against each other for a new stadium. The Commanders played the stadium leverage game with three places: Maryland, Virginia and D.C.

While most people outside of Kansas City may be befuddled by the issue, it’s one the Chiefs will need to work around.

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During his life, team founder Lamar Hunt, father of current owner Clark Hunt, stated the team was not only for Kansas City but also belonged to Mid-America, including Iowa, Arkansas, Nebraska and Oklahoma. But those states don’t have to deal with the issue of a team leaving their backyard, jumping the fence to join a rival.

“Growing up in Kansas City, the state line was always a big thing, and I think it held us back,” Thompson says. “I think it holds the city back in a lot of ways. So I guess I would hope that maybe this is some small measure that they’re going to bring the city more together. As a kid who was raised here and lived the majority of my life here, that’s a pipe dream to think that will happen. … So I get why they’re doing it, but that was kind of a sellout to see which side would give them more money. I think they ought to be in Kansas City, Missouri in the end.”

Some, such as 14-year season-ticket holder David Schloegel, are more understanding of the team picking up and moving to Kansas despite being a Missouri native and lifelong Kansas Citian, largely blaming local and state government for failing to come through.

“I was mixed originally, but now I feel like KCMO has kind of dropped the ball,” Schloegel says. “I think this could be a new chapter. I gave KCMO about three or four years to get their stuff figured out, and they couldn’t do it.”

Another issue for some fans is a new name.

After playing their first nine seasons as the Chiefs in Kansas City Municipal Stadium, the franchise moved to Arrowhead, a stadium name that has stuck, with the caveat of the field being sponsored by GEHA from 2021 to ’25.

Now back to the original moniker, something the team plans to maintain until the relocation, the thought of a new building being under corporate sponsorship hasn’t sat well with many, including Schloegel and Thompson.

“One hundred percent, unequivocally, they should keep the name,” Thompson says. “The Chiefs play at Arrowhead Stadium. They don’t play at some corporate place with a corporate name. You might as well be the Atlanta Falcons if you’re going to do that. Some no-name, add-on in the NFL. This is one of the original franchises of the AFL. The founding father of the AFL was the patriarch of this team, and they play in Arrowhead, and that’s the stadium that he built. And if his son’s building the stadium, it should still be Arrowhead.”

The team has publicly said it does have plans to take a sponsorship for naming rights, something every NFL team has except the Bears and Packers. When contacted for this story, the Chiefs declined to be interviewed.

For now, Kansas City doesn’t have to face the prospect of the last game there for a while. If Chiefs Kingdom has its way, the team will send out the building in style, with Patrick Mahomes hoisting another trophy named after the team’s founder for winning the AFC.

Currently, though, the Chiefs have embarked on another season with championship aspirations, winning their first two games at Arrowhead in prime time over the Broncos and Colts.

In five years, the currently bustling sports complex will be empty. MLB’s Royals, whose Kauffman Stadium shares these parking lots, are also on the move. By 2030, the baseball team will be in a new ballpark downtown, yet staying in Missouri. The Chiefs will shift west to a new portion of the city. There, the asphalt will be freshly paved. The barbecue will roast and the smells will waft. And the stadium, name unknown, will burst with every bell and whistle imaginable.

Whether that’s an upgrade or not is, and will remain, a source of debate for some time.

This article was originally published on www.si.com as The Chiefs’ Move From Missouri to Kansas Is More Complicated Than Many Fans Realize.

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This story was originally published September 25, 2026 at 4:00 AM.