Kansas Using Sports Betting Revenue to Pursue Royals, Chiefs

Could the state of Kansas really succeed at wooing the Royals and the Chiefs to move their headquarters across state lines? (Photo: Newscom / Alamy Live)

The state of Kansas has used sports betting to build a $26 million fund designed to help attract professional sports teams to the state, with a particular focus on two that already have the word Kansas in their names.

Known as the Attracting Professional Sports to Kansas Fund, the war chest is the primary beneficiary of legalized sports betting in Kansas, which launched in September 2022.

Chiefs, Royals Targeted by Kansas Officials 

Since that time, Kansas has built a strong sports betting market. In August 2025, the state’s sportsbooks brought in $12.5 million in gross gaming revenue on $189.8 million in handle, with nearly 99 percent of all handle coming from online and mobile betting. 

But while many states funnel their sports betting revenue into general funds or community works, Kansas has found a unique use for its winnings. 

The state gets 10 percent of all sports wagering revenue. Each year, $750,000 of that is placed into a White Collar Crime Fund to investigate illegal wagers, while some is directed towards the state’s Gambling Addiction Grant Fund. But the vast majority of the state’s sportsbook revenue – 80 percent of it – is placed in the fund designed to attract professional sports teams.

It’s part of a long-term effort by Kansas officials to attract the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs and/or MLB’s Kansas City Royals to the state. While their names might suggest they already play out of Kansas, they’re both based in Kansas City, Missouri.

However, both teams have agreements to stay in the city that end in the early 2030s. That has made them targets for the state of Kansas – which could easily move them right over the border to Kansas City, Kansas, a close suburb of the Missouri city of the same name. 

State Senator Questions Value of Stadium Funds

The effort is part of a larger border war between Missouri and Kansas, which have often fund themselves in competition for businesses. The states have at times agreed to stop recruiting across the border, with the latest truce being ended by Kansas City, Missouri in September 2025. 

So far, the state government hasn’t spent any of the money in the Attracting Professional Sports to Kansas fund. Under the law, money in the fund can be used to pay the principal or interest on any state or municipal bonds related to the “construction, rehabilitation, revitalization, or expansion of a professional sports team’s primary facility or any other ancillary development to such primary facility.”

But that use case has drawn criticism from some Kansas legislators. State Senator Mike Thompson (R-Shawnee) said in a recent committee hearing that he didn’t think funding facilities for sports teams was a good use of city or state funds.

“If you read that statute very carefully, it draws some questions,” Thompson said. “I’ve never seen any evidence that these things pay for themselves, that taxpayers will receive a reduction in tax rates.”

It’s unclear where the Kansas government would direct the fund should they fail to attract teams to the state. Legislators will have a chance to modify regulations regarding sportsbooks – and their revenues – in the 2026 legislative session.