One week ago, Clark Hunt stood at a podium in Topeka to announce the future of the Kansas City Chiefs. After years of speculation, politicking, and debate, Hunt, the team’s chairman and CEO, made it official: the Chiefs are moving to Kansas.
Their new home would be a $3 billion, domed, 68,000-seat stadium to be built in Wyandotte County, about 20 miles west of Arrowhead Stadium. The Chiefs are expected to play their home games there starting in 2031.
In a letter Hunt wrote to fans about the move, he repeated a notion that has been at the center of the pitch for not only a newly constructed stadium, but a domed stadium: that Kansas City will one day host a Super Bowl.
“A stadium of this caliber will put Kansas City in the running for Super Bowls, Final Fours, and other world-class events,” Hunt said. Other proponents of a dome, including Chiefs president Mark Donovan, have echoed that same optimism.
But will it actually happen? Will the NFL’s showpiece event, the Super Bowl, ever actually make it to Kansas City? History says it will, but there’s a catch. For years, the unwritten rule around NFL stadiums has been that if you build a new one and it has a roof, you’ll get to host the Super Bowl. And so far, that’s been true.
Kansas City’s new domed stadium makes a Super Bowl appearance more likely, but history suggests it may be a one-time event.
Every newly built indoor stadium has hosted a Super Bowl within five years of opening. That’s Houston, Detroit, Phoenix, Indianapolis, Dallas, Minneapolis, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and New Orleans. Meanwhile, since 1996, only three of the 14 open-air stadiums that have been built — San Francisco, Tampa Bay, and New York — have hosted the NFL’s championship game.
That bodes well for Kansas City. If you close it (the roof), they (the NFL) will come. However, that doesn’t mean they’ll come often. Dallas, Detroit, Indianapolis, and Minneapolis have each hosted the Super Bowl only once, which is surprising given the size of the metro areas and the quality of the stadiums that have been built.
Dallas–Fort Worth is the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States, while Detroit ranks 13th. By comparison, Kansas City is 34th on that list, and it would become the fourth-smallest metro area to ever host a Super Bowl (14th out of 17 host cities), ahead of only Jacksonville, Indianapolis, and New Orleans.
And building a top-notch stadium doesn’t guarantee that the NFL will come back to your neighbourhood, either. Sports Illustrated ranked U.S. Bank Stadium (Minneapolis), AT&T Stadium (Dallas), and Lucas Oil Stadium (Indianapolis) as the second-, third-, and ninth-best stadiums in the entire league, respectively, earlier this year. Still, each venue has hosted the league’s showpiece event only once.
That means that even if Kansas City happened to build the best football stadium in the entire country, that doesn’t mean the league will come and visit time and time again.
There are other factors working against Kansas City, too—mainly competition. The Chiefs aren’t the only team building a roofed stadium. The Tennessee Titans (2027), Cleveland Browns (2029), and Washington Commanders (2030) are all set to open new domed stadiums in the future. Like the Chiefs, the Chicago Bears and Denver Broncos also plan on playing under a roof by 2031, too. That’s a lot of cities, teams, and states gunning to host the same event.
Their respective opening timelines mean that, theoretically, all six venues could host a Super Bowl within that five-year bubble, but it will be tight. With locations confirmed for the next three NFL finales, only two Super Bowls between 2026 and 2029 could be played away from those six new stadiums. It’s likely that at least one city will miss out, and that could be Kansas City.
The problem is that while the Chiefs as a team are extremely marketable, Kansas City itself is not, at least not compared to places like Los Angeles, New Orleans, Miami, Dallas, and Las Vegas. And while the Chiefs are currently the biggest team in the world of the NFL, Kansas City itself is not at the centre of the NFL universe.
Do I think Kansas City will host a Super Bowl one day? Sure, history says it’s likely. But do I think Kansas City will ever become a go-to Super Bowl destination or even host two of them? No, I don’t. I hope I’m wrong.
Clark Hunt, Mark Donovan, Chiefs Kingdom, Kansans, and Missourians should all be excited about the idea of hosting the Super Bowl one day. But it’s important to remember that it’s still just a hope, not a guarantee. And if it does happen, it isn’t likely to become Super Bowls, plural.