The proposed $1.9 billion Royals ballpark at Crown Center could end up being the fourth-most expensive Major League Baseball stadium so far.

At that price, even adjusted for inflation, it would be more than double the cost of Truist Park, which opened in 2017 in Atlanta. It would nearly quadruple the cost of Coors Field, opened in 1995 in Denver.

Three baseball stadiums top the proposed Crown Center ballpark: the proposed $2.3 billion Tampa Bay Rays stadium, the under-construction $2 billion Las Vegas Athletics stadium and Yankee Stadium in New York, which cost $1.3 billion in 2009 — or $2.1 billion adjusted to 2025 dollars.

So what’s driving up the cost?

The team has not provided any details beyond its own $1.9 billion cost estimate. And neither has Kansas City Hall, which has offered up to $600 million to help finance the ballpark.

But economists believe that the biggest drivers of stadium inflation are the growing subsidies that cities, counties and states award to the teams.

“Subsidies raise prices,” said Geoffrey Propheter, a public finance professor at the University of Colorado-Denver, “in nearly every single real-world policy context.”

To learn more about Kansas City’s $600 million contribution to the Royals ballpark, click here.

To learn more about the state of Missouri’s subsidy for the ballpark, click here.

‘Think big’: A growing price for the Royals ballpark

Plans for a new Royals ballpark have slowly grown in scale and price over the past three years.

In 2023, the Royals first unveiled their vision for a downtown stadium and entertainment district in Kansas City’s largely empty East Village downtown. Combined, the stadium and district would have cost “more than $2 billion” and taken up 27 acres.

The 2024 plan for a site in the Crossroads had a slightly smaller footprint but a similar price. The total cost of the proposed 18-acre stadium and entertainment district was estimated at $2 billion.

When Jackson County voters overwhelmingly rejected a sales tax to finance that plan, the Royals went back to the drawing board.

During the process, Royals Chairman and CEO John Sherman said at the team’s April 22 announcement, former Mayor Kay Barnes encouraged him to “think big.”

“And if you think big, think bigger,” Sherman said. “We’re bringing a second crown downtown. We will build a project that will be the largest public-private partnership in Kansas City history.”

The latest 85-acre proposal totals $3 billion between the stadium and the adjacent entertainment district.

Out of that $3 billion, $1.9 billion will pay for the stadium itself, with the other $1 billion paying for the ancillary development.

That would put the Crown Center stadium — not including the entertainment district — as the fourth-most expensive ballpark in Major League Baseball history.

Notably, a perfect apples-to-apples comparison of stadium project cost totals is difficult because of transparency issues around funding. Some project costs may only include stadium-related construction, whereas others may be inflated by land costs, lawsuits or infrastructure upgrades like extra lanes on highways.

Just a number, with no explanation

That $1.9 billion project cost likely includes several categories of expenses.

One of the largest is the actual construction cost — including “hard” construction costs like labor and materials, as well as “soft” construction costs like design.

The project cost will also include personal property, such as the seats to be installed, the jumbotron, kitchen equipment for concession stands and luxury suite amenities.

And finally, there’s the significant expense of land acquisition and clearance.

The Royals plan to construct a new stadium on the 15-acre site of the current Hallmark headquarters, which will need to be demolished. It’s not yet clear how Hallmark, the Royals and Kansas City will divide the cost of the site at Crown Center. But Jackson County assessed the stadium site’s largest parcel at a market value of $12.6 million in 2026.

Notably, the $1.9 billion project cost did not change when the Royals announced the Hallmark headquarters location — rather than the widely anticipated Washington Square Park site — despite the two locations likely having different expenses associated with site preparation.

But aside from the total project cost, the Royals are tight-lipped about how the actual costs break down — including how they plan to spend nearly $1 billion of the public’s tax money.

Those itemized details, if they were made public, could explain where the high costs are coming from — whether it’s construction materials or land clearance or something else.

Sam Mellinger, a spokesperson for the Royals, told The Beacon that the cost breakdown likely will not be available to the public until after the development plan is fully negotiated. The team has said about $800 million of the ballpark’s cost would be privately financed.

Asked by email whether the cost details have been provided to anyone at City Hall, Mellinger responded, “The team has been in consistent communication with leaders at City Hall.”

Kansas City Councilmember Andrea Bough, who represents the 6th District at large and chairs the council’s Finance, Governance and Public Safety Committee, said that she did not recall seeing the cost breakdown. Neither did Councilmembers Wes Rogers, who represents the 2nd District, or Johnathan Duncan, who represents the 6th District.

Sherae Honeycutt, the spokesperson for City Hall, told The Beacon that if the city has a cost breakdown, it is a closed record while negotiations with the Royals are ongoing. City Manager Mario Vasquez is representing the city in those negotiations.

“Once agreements are executed, the appropriate documents will be made public as provided by law,” Honeycutt said in an email.

Mayor Quinton Lucas’ office told The Beacon in an email that the new Royals ballpark is still cheaper than the under-construction Athletics stadium in Las Vegas and proposed Tampa Bay Rays stadium in Florida, estimated at $2 billion and $2.3 billion respectively. 

(The Athletics stadium was initially expected to cost $1.5 billion but has become more expensive during the construction period.)

“The $1.9 billion figure would include the construction of team offices, the new stadium, and changes to infrastructure,” Lucas’ office wrote in the email. “The stadium is still in preliminary stages of development, so current costs are based on estimates. A complete cost breakdown, including up-to-date union prevailing wage scales and construction costs, is being updated.”

Lucas said that the increase is largely due to the rising costs of construction materials and labor.

However, The Beacon’s analysis already accounts for inflation, using the Engineering News-Record’s construction cost index that measures the cost of lumber, steel, concrete and labor.

Subsidies yield more expensive and lavish stadiums

Propheter, the public finance professor at the University of Colorado-Denver, studies the economics of stadiums and stadium subsidies. He said one of the main reasons that stadium costs are increasing is because tax subsidies encourage teams to add opulent upgrades.

He calls the phenomenon the “gold-plating effect.”

Propheter studied the subsidies of more than 100 stadiums across the country in 2014 and found that when taxpayers contribute money to a stadium, that money pays for “opulent upgrades.” 

Those kinds of upgrades include the Dallas Cowboys’ $40 million Jumbotron or the Sacramento Kings’ 7,500-square-foot retractable glass doors.

At Kansas City’s own publicly funded Arrowhead Stadium, the Hunt family has a private multilevel six-bedroom, three-bathroom luxury suite, including a spiral staircase, a fireplace and stained-glass windows.

For football and baseball stadiums in particular, he found that roughly half of any given subsidy tends to go toward those opulent upgrades.

In the case of Kansas City’s $600 million subsidy, that translates to about $300 million in opulent upgrades. That’s nearly the same amount of money that Kansas City spent on its Main Street streetcar extension.

“We’re subsidizing an activity,” he said, “and some nontrivial fraction of that subsidy is crowding out money that the private market — in this case, teams and leagues — would have contributed anyway. But because you crowded it out, their cost goes down, and that forces them to, quote, ‘buy more stadium.’”

To use an analogy, imagine that you’re going to the movie theater, planning to spend $15 on your movie ticket. But then your friend buys the ticket for you as a gift. 

You still have $15 that you budgeted for your outing, so you might end up spending it on a bucket of popcorn and a soda that you wouldn’t have bought otherwise.

Or in the case of the Royals ballpark, the $600 million that Kansas City plans to spend on the team is allowing them to build a stadium that’s more expensive. 

The initial renderings show roofing with a built-in animated light show that flashes blue and gold, massive 50-foot fountains in the outfield and towers of what appear to be luxury box suites with rooftop gardens.

The trap that politicians fall into, Propheter said, is that those stadium subsidies have become baked into the market. The subsidies increase the stadium costs, which makes lawmakers think that they need to give bigger subsidies.

“Here’s the circular reasoning that shows up,” he said. “The teams are building (the stadium) and designing it based upon league standards. Where did the league standards come from? They came from all the prior facilities that received subsidies that were able to make them more opulent and luxurious and cater to wealthy fans.” 

When the Chiefs relocate to Wyandotte County, Kansas, they will receive $1.8 billion in public subsidies for a $3 billion stadium. That’s nearly twice as much money as the Royals will get from Kansas City and Missouri, for a stadium that’s about 1.5 times more expensive.

Teams often blame the increase in project costs on the inflation of construction materials.

And to be fair, that’s a part of it. But stadium costs are increasing much faster than the construction cost index, which measures the inflation of specifically labor, lumber, steel and concrete.

“Lawmakers say that stadium costs have increased,” Propheter said, and “the only way you’re going to be able to build this or afford this is if we give you subsidies. But subsidies are driving the cost … Subsidies are not the solution, they’re the problem.”