Missouri Senator Nick Schroer Takes Aim at Chiefs Sportsbook

Missouri state Senator Nick Schroer has taken aim at the Kansas City Chiefs with an amended sports betting bill after the team announced its intention to move from Arrowhead Stadium to a newly built stadium in Kansas.

The newly proposed Missouri sports betting bill appears designed to prevent the Chiefs from operating a sportsbook at Arrowhead if the team ultimately leaves the state.

While sports betting went live in Missouri on December 1, 2025, a new amendment would evict the Chiefs from Missouri’s lucrative sports betting market.

Details of Senate Joint Resolution 109

Senate Joint Resolution 109 (SJR 109) will tightly link sportsbook privileges to whether a professional team plays its home games in Missouri. The proposed amendment would require voter approval, likely during the November 2026 election.

The bill would redefine “professional sports teams” to exclude any team not playing in Missouri. It also reassesses designated “sports districts” as stadiums and surrounding areas located in Missouri where a professional sports team plays their home games. Betting activity inside a sports district would require approval from the team that plays its home games there.

Under the amendment, the Chiefs could still operate a sportsbook at Arrowhead as long as they continue to play their home games in Missouri. That means this won’t affect the franchise until it officially moves to the new stadium in 2031.

Kansas City Mayor’s Frustration Over New Deal

Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas recently expressed frustration that communities in Kansas and Missouri did not honor the Border War truce between the two states.

“A lot of us believed in that Border War truce,” Lucas told KCTV 5 News. “And what is frustrating is that there were communities that were negotiating departures, you know, other arrangements with businesses while that was still in place.”

Missouri taxpayers voted “no” on a 2024 ballot proposal that would have provided the Chiefs with hundreds of millions in public funding to renovate Arrowhead Stadium.

Inside the Chiefs’ $3 Billion Kansas Stadium Deal

  • Total Public Subsidy: $1.8 Billion in public funding (STAR Bonds)
  • Team Revenue Retention: 100% (tickets, parking, concessions, sponsorships, naming rights, and more)
  • Rent Payments: $7 Million per year
  • Lease Term: 30 Years
  • Maintenance Fund: Rent paid into fund used for renovations, repairs, and operational expenses

Instead of working out a new deal, the Chiefs decided to move to a new dome in Kansas in what analysts have described as one of the most lopsided stadium deals in NFL history.

The deal was essentially too good to pass up.

When including stadium funding, mixed-use development funding, and tax incentives, Kansas is basically giving the Chiefs the entire cost of the $3 billion and receiving virtually nothing in return.

The Chiefs will receive $1.8 billion in public funding — the largest public subsidy ever for a U.S. sports stadium project.

Under the terms of the new deal, the Chiefs get to keep 100% of the revenue from all stadium activities. That includes ticket sales, concessions, sponsorships, naming rights deals, personal seat licenses, and more. These terms don’t just apply to NFL games, but to all stadium events, like concerts, basketball games, etc.

Kansas will own the stadium, with the Chiefs paying $7 million in rent annually for at least 30 years. But that money doesn’t go back to the state. Instead, it gets funneled into an account the Chiefs can use for renovations, repairs, and operational expenses.

That means the Chiefs can use their own rent money to hire stadium security, parking staff, and concession vendors throughout the season.

Protecting Missouri’s Sports Betting Market

This was the exact type of deal that Missouri taxpayers voted against and the newly proposed bill is set to add protections designed to benefit the state. If approved, the amendment would ensure that the tax dollars generated by Missouri’s sports betting market serves Missouri residents by protecting the state’s interest in how betting revenue is generated and used.