Is The Hunt Family Cheap? I Say No!

Cheap Bastards! It’s a label I have seen placed on the Hunt family for years. Frankly it’s a label I have always had difficulty understanding.

Lamar Hunt  certainly wasn’t considered cheap when he and the rest of the “Foolish Club” started the AFL. They lost millions and millions of dollars but never gave up until the AFL finally became a competitive and respectable league.

A couple of years into it, he built (ok with some help from the city) what is still one of the largest NFL stadiums in the league. It took a lot of courage to build a stadium with that kind of capacity in one of the smallest venues in the league.

Building small stadiums in large venues is smart business. It assures sell out crowds and allows for inflated seat prices, as in Chicago and other stadiums.

Building large stadiums in small venues makes it difficult to sell out and encourages cheap seat prices.

Lamar of course knew this. He wanted everyone who wanted to see his beloved Chiefs play to be given a chance to do so. So he built the colossal  stadium we call Arrowhead anyway.

After the glory years of the late sixties, the Chiefs, well sucked. If ever a team was ripe to be moved it was the red and gold of Kansas City.

But with Lamar, the subject never came up. The Chiefs belonged to the Hunt Family, and the Kansas City fans. And in Kansas City they would stay.

The recent investment of millions by the Hunt family insures that our beloved Chiefs will be playing in Kansas City for a long long time.

But what about Clark? What about Pioli?

I won’t label them cheap either.

Since Clark took the helm, my season tickets improved dramatically, while the prices actually went down.

This new regime created the cheapest NFL seat in the league at $25.00.

During the renovation, unlike the Chicago bears, the Hunt family actually added seats to Arrowhead. They added seats in the midst of some of the lowest attended games in decades.

They wanted to make sure you could see a game if you wanted to. As did Lamar.

Sure they keep the salary under the cap. So what. It;s the smart man who keeps expenses down in order to be able to afford golden opportunities when they arise.

And this year it paid off with the addition of some of the best free agency talent in the league.

Another classic money saving technique is to trade away from the low draft picks. Another money saving move that we don’t see the front off ice in Kansas City taking.

Last year I got a free brick at the stadium with my name on it.

This year I got a free jersey.

The draft party this year was awesome! (see last weeks post)

Cheap bastards? I say no way when it comes to the Kansas City Chiefs and the Hunt family.

What say you?