KC World Cup Revenues Out, New Chiefs Stadium Info and Trump ... in Kansas?! | 10-8-26

Pete Mundo (0:02)

So, was it worth it?

It's not as simple as some people want to make it out to be. Something can still be worth it even if the money doesn't necessarily back it up. It is 6.04, good morning, happy Thursday. Thanks for starting your morning with us right here on Mundo in the Morning. So, we have some sales tax numbers for Kansas City tied to the World Cup. Remember, we were told that the World Cup was going to come to Kansas City and you were going to have money growing from the trees, right? Mark's got his Netherland shirt on right now.

Mark (0:39)

Didn't know this was going to be the opening segment, but let's go.

Pete Mundo (0:41)

Let's go, he's fired up, he's ready. Mark doesn't have a hat on today because the president of the company is showing up, so he actually looks halfway decent. No, he always looks good. No one pulls off a hat like Mark, he looks great. It's almost weird seeing him without a hat, to be honest. But we've got some data here, and what it shows is that Kansas City saw an uptick in sales taxes collected in June. So June is when Kansas City had four group stage matches. We had Argentina-Algeria, Ecuador-Curacao, Tunisia, and the Netherlands. Mark's got his Netherlands t-shirt on. Algeria and Austria, those were the four games in Kansas City in the month of June. Here's what we got when it came to sales taxes collected in Kansas City, Missouri proper. Sales taxes collected were $31.9 million, compared to $29.8 million collected in June of 2025 That's about a 7% increase in a month with four World Cup matches. And by the way, I got to credit Dave Helling, Kansas City's stack on Substack, doing a great job putting all these numbers together. So we got to get Dave back on the show soon, but he is the source for this information that I was reading last night. So we saw a 7% uptick in sales tax revenues to Kansas City, $2.1 million.

Now, naturally, you would have seen an uptick in sales tax revenues anyway, just because of inflation, right? The dirty little secret about inflation is that governments secretly don't mind it, because if the cost of goods go up, their sales tax revenues go up. If the same amount of money is spent in a city or a municipality year over year, if the cost of the goods and the services just keep increasing because of inflation, they get more.

So like, yes, their costs theoretically also go up, but still, they don't mind it. They're not necessarily against it. So we had four World Cup matches and we saw a 7% uptick in sales taxes to the tune of $2.1 million more. Now, let's not forget, Kansas City, of course, was on the hook for about $15 million as part of this World Cup investment, and there were only two games in the month of July.

So is that a success on your end? When you think about this from a taxpayer perspective, a business perspective, I know that we have the great photos of all of Mark and his friends from the Netherlands walking down Grand Ave, marching down in their orange. They all looked good. It was a great viral scene for Kansas City.

They didn't spend as much money here as I thought.

$2 million more in sales tax revenue, a 7% increase. It's OK. It's not amazing. Now, does that mean the World Cup was naturally a flop for Kansas City? No, not at all. Not for a second. There are certain things that are just great for the city, brands the city very well and effectively on the world stage. You can't put a price tag on that, just like you can't put a price tag on having the Chiefs, having the Royals, having these teams in our backyard and being a pro town. It's not as black and white as numerically driven as some people want to make it out to be. That being said, I think an important nuance here is when these cities and your political leaders promise you this amazing windfall of money, for fill in the blank, NFL draft, World Cup, one day a Super Bowl, one day a Major League Baseball all-star game in a new stadium, the Women's World Cup, you go up and down the list. Take it with a grain of salt. I take it and realize, yes, there's some cool stuff that can come out of this. But the idea that everybody just automatically wins when you see sales tax revenues in Kansas City for this June up 7% year over year, despite all of the amazing viral photos that we saw from World War I, from Mark and his friends marching down Grand App. It's never as rosy as they want to make it out to be, John.