While the Browns negotiate a new stadium, voters just gave the Chiefs and Royals a big-fat no

KANSAS CITY, Missouri — Where the Cleveland Browns will play and how many tax dollars will subsidize the team’s future stadium are unclear. But elsewhere, voters just gave two pro franchises asking for money a big-fat no.

Voters in the Kansas City metro area on Tuesday rejected a sales tax that would have funneled $500 million to the Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs and Royals baseball team. “No” took 58% of the vote, despite the “yes” side outspending them by at least 20-to-1, according to the Kansas City Star.

The Chiefs were proposing an $800 million renovation of Arrowhead Stadium, while the Royals were proposing a new, $1.3 billion ballpark in downtown Kansas City.

Voters had already been paying a 3/8th-cent sales tax first approved in 2006. This ballot. measure would have replaced it with a new tax that would extend it through 2064, according to the Kansas City Star.

The sales tax vote failed by similar margins in Kansas City and surrounding areas of Jackson County, with about 78,300 people in total voting no, versus 56,600 voting yes.

Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas said on X, formerly Twitter, that voters “rejected plans and processes they found inadequate.”

Royals owner John Sherman said the team was “deeply disappointed” after the vote, according to KSHB, a local TV station. Both the Royals and Chiefs said they’d look to figure out what their next steps are.

The last big vote on stadium incentives in Cleveland and Cuyahoga County was in 2014, when voters extended the sin tax on alcohol and cigarettes by an 8-point marging, 56% to 44%. The sin tax has yielded about $13 to $14 million per year in recent years.

The tax was first passed in 1990 to fund the construction of the Cavaliers’ arena and the Guardians’ stadium but was later amended to also include the Browns.

City and county officials have not made their negotiations with the Browns public. But Jimmy Haslam said at the NFL owners meeting that renovating existing Cleveland Browns Stadium would cost $1 billion.

Building a domed stadium in Brook Park would cost “at least double that,” Haslam said.