In 2022, the Kansas City Royals owner, John Sherman, wrote a letter to fans telling them that he intended to move the Royals to a new ballpark in the future. Sherman didn’t give any substantial information on the ballpark plans except to say that any decision made by the team will think of residents first and that “transparency” would continue to be their “guidepost.” The Kansas City Royals also announced in 2022 that they were putting together an internal study to find a new ballpark. Every few months, the Royals promised an answer to where their new ballpark would be located. Every time, the deadline would pass without any answers. At one point, the Royals admitted to looking at 14+ different locations around the city. When the Royals finally decided, they did so after a months-long delay.
The following year, 2023, the Kansas City Royals were trying to gain public support for a sales tax initiative that would substantially fund their new ballpark. But as 2023 was ending, locals still had almost no details about a new ballpark. Therefore, Sherman wrote another letter to the fans stating that the Royals were “committed to doing this right” and therefore would be “more transparent about their plans for a new ballpark.” As you can probably guess, the Royals changed nothing and continued to keep locals in the dark. Which is crazy considering the Royals eventually would pick a ballpark location that currently had as many as 12 active businesses. All of these companies would need to be moved or closed down. At this point, the Royals called a press conference where they told journalists that discussions with “property owners had already begun” and that the team just wanted the ballpark to be “done with the community in mind, transparently…(and) good neighbors.” Again, the Royals were patting themselves on the back for things that had not happened. One business owner told FlatLandKC.org that the Royals never opened a “direct dialogue with tenant business owners who would be displaced.” Other business owners admitted that they had asked the Royals questions that have gone “unanswered for months.” When local media began asking questions, the team suggested that they would help any business that was being “displaced to find a new home”…but most importantly, the Royals never offered any guarantees or even details about this.
Consequently, last year, Jackson County taxpayers rejected the sales tax extension. The Royals (and Chiefs, for that matter) didn’t just lose, but they lost by a massive margin, 58% to 42%. Maybe the biggest reason that they lost? Voters were confused. Confused at everything. As one Royals blogger put it, “Everything about the Royals’ new stadium plan has been shrouded in secrecy.”
“When Jackson County voters were given the choice to subsidize a…baseball stadium in 2024, there seemed to be more questions than answers…The leases hadn’t yet been negotiated, nor had a community benefits agreement. More importantly, there was no clear funding plan for the stadium…Without a funding plan, Jackson County voters were being asked to help pay for a stadium without knowing how much money the team was expecting Missouri or Kansas City to contribute, or how much money the Royals themselves were planning to pitch in” – The Beacon News, 2025
Basic questions could not be answered; the Royals wanted taxpayers to essentially trust them with public money. People went to the polls and still weren’t sure where the new ballpark would be built. Today, it is November 2025 and the Royals continue to hide their future plans and where their new ballpark will be located.
Voters were also put off by the way the Royals went about the Community Benefits Agreement. In early 2023, the Royals announced with great fanfare that they would put forward a community benefits agreement that was “robust in nature” and would “uplift our community and its needs.” Yet, nobody heard anything about the CBA until a few weeks before the sales tax vote in 2024. Even at that point, most community groups had left the negotiations. As the Kansas City Star summarized, “the details remain unsettled and tied up in talks,” while the public is “locked in a mystery about the particulars.” Furthermore, who gets what in this CBA? When KSHB asked a county legislator who was involved in the negotiations about this question, the answer given was that it was “too early to say.” Wait, what? THIS WAS TWO WEEKS BEFORE THE SALES TAX VOTE. How is it too early to say?
Ok, so the Royals lost the vote. Moving forward, things would change. The Royals “promised to learn from the results” and come back with a better plan that better involved the community. As the year 2025 started, The Kansas City Star editorial board wrote an article that discussed how the Royals promised better transparency after the sales tax debacle, yet there continued to be “little public engagement” thanks to “months of backroom negotiations.”
This brings us to last week. I saw a story about the Kansas City Royals wanting fan feedback on a survey about potential ballparks. The survey asked questions about the ballpark being located in downtown, near downtown, Clay County/North Kansas City, and Johnson County/Overland Park. The Royals claim that this survey is meant to “optimize fans experiences” in their new ballpark. Whatever that means. In addition to the survey, Sherman released a statement where he claimed that the Royals were “constantly engaging and listening to” their fans. Really? Maybe Sherman can answer the fan who told KSHB that when he received the survey from the team, he simply asked himself, “What exactly is the plan?” Nobody knows. The Royals will continue to issue statements claiming how much they love the community, yet, as the Kansas City Star noted, “there is little evidence (the Royals) have pursued serious stadium dialogues with the people most affected by the issue: the public.”
