Is Kansas City a baseball or football town?
 

Perhaps a bit unfair in the wake of a World Series championship, but does anyone view Kansas City as a baseball city?

They were talking about it this morning on the radio and I heard a guy mention that KC was more into the Royals in the 70s and 80s than ever into the Chiefs.

I can't comment on the accuracy of that statement, but other KC natives might have other insight.

Curling

There are several professional sports teams in KC. I'd call it a sports town.

I know way more people that are Royals fans than Chiefs fans. out of all my friends I roll with, I think I'm the only one who leans more towards the Chiefs.

Aerial Acrobatics

Back in the 90s when the Chiefs were making the playoffs pretty much every year, you could make the argument that KC is a football town. Since the Royals have been so good lately, it leans more toward baseball.

If the Royals keep winning or at least are a competitive franchise while the chiefs continue to do jack shit, things will sort themselves out.

Baseball..always has been. Even though the Chiefs took over for a bit this town has always been a baseball town.

Baseball has so many more games and it really gives everyone a chance to be a part of it at one point or another. Every city is a bandwagon town with their sports teams but I think the Royals have always had more pull in this one.

I think Kansas Citians are fans of anything that brings positive attention to their great town.

It's a town for whoever is winning at the time. Like every other city. If the Chiefs ever won another title it would be just as crazy for them.

It would be interesting to see what kind of turn out there would be for a Chiefs parade. The weather would most likely be awful for a February day not just for the parade but the parking and the walking and the waiting.

This team was chock full of charisma, and went to the WS last year too. It's just a huge time for baseball here. But KC loves a winner the same, football or baseball

Whichever sport is winning at the moment.

Yes

this

I think you could take yesterday's gather X 2 if the Chiefs won the Super Bowl.

I say this because I live in Jefferson City which is probably 90/10 Cardinal to Royals fans. It's the exact opposite when it comes to the Chiefs. I'm in the heart of Chiefs/Cardinals fans here. I'm considered the oddball because I'm a Chiefs/Royals fan.

I know we are talking KC but if you include the areas outside KC then the Chiefs are the dominant team.

It's both.

It's a football town.

If both teams are ever successful, you'd really have your answer. But really, for a long time both teams were bad to mediocre and the Chiefs got more support than the Royals by a large margin. Hell, just look at the energy behind the fan revolt for the Chiefs and you see the passion. Royals fans never ginned up that kind of outrage or momentum.

It is not a baseball town. 13 months ago Royals fans were getting called out by their manager for putting 14,000 people in the seats. Even in 2013 when they were almost as exciting to watch as this year's team, their television ratings were in the crapper. A baseball town doesn't ignore the 2014 Royals until the mid-September like Kansas City did, not off the successes of the 2013 team and not with an entirely homegrown squad that played with the energy this Royals team has played with for 4 years now (even when they were losing, they played their asses off).

You can't compare championship seasons to anything to determine how much a city cares. You have to look at how they react to average. When the Chiefs are an average football team, this town is excited as hell about them. When the Royals were merely average, nobody really gave a crap.

Didn't we have threads on here about whether soccer was bigger than baseball a couple of years ago when SKC was winning. Seems pretty silly now

If all 3 were winning I think football would be biggest. That's probably true of most towns

except st. louis

I know more Royals fans than Chiefs fans

Did you buy any Cards postseason gear?

Obviously now you would say baseball but if the Chiefs start winning you would see just as much if not more support

I would say that at this very moment, baseball. However, I didn't see any banners flying over Kauffman after 20 years of shit teams. It feels like a lifetime since the Chiefs were consistently good and fans are ****ing angry about it. Fans came to expect the Royals to suck every year and they became the 'lovable losers.'

When the Royals eventually get shitty again, there will be some bitching but it won't last too long because it's expected.
Kansas City is a football town that supports its baseball team. Especially when they are winning.

Lol don't ask a cardinals fan that question.

When before 2013 were the Royals ever average on any kind of regular basis?

Women also like the Royals far more than the Chiefs.

Trying to place a binary definition on something that isn't necessarily binary.

I always thought of KC as a baseball town, but I think this is accurate. Through the 90's and (early) 00's, it was purely a Chiefs town with them winning all the games they did and the Royals sucking hind tit. The last three seasons have definitely swung the pendulum back the Royals way.

The problem is, the Royals were SO bad for SO long that the town just wholeheartedly embraced the Chiefs to escape the suck of the Royals. The fact that the Chiefs were actually really competitive and won a few AFC West titles along the way didn't hurt, either.

Growing up I knew the town as a baseball town, but I think Keg hit it - we just support winners. Look no further than Sporting KC and the mad support they get.

I lived in KC from '81 to 2000, but I was born there so counting the 80s probably isn't all that useful.

So yeah, it may just be because of when I grew up that it's always seemed a football town. But like I said, I think the reaction to the lean years is telling. Chiefs fans flew banners and put 30K guys in the stands wearing black. Fans who were fed up with only about 5 years of abject suck made national headlines in Kansas City.

The was certainly never the case with the Royals. The passion just wasn't there and it was never there in the 90s, even as they were descending from their peaks of the 80s. The fans skipped right over outrage and when to apathy. Hell, it didn't even take that long. By the 90s when I was in school, I can name the 3 big Royals fans in my class of 300 people. Nobody gave a shit just a few years after the Royals were fielding HOFers.

Most towns, when you get down to it, are largely bandwagon towns. But some really do have an identity and to me, KC can make that claim. The 'loudest stadium in the NFL'. The incredible tailgate scene. Red Friday even when they're bad. The fact that the best Royals conversation online is almost certainly on a Chiefs football board - it all points to a conclusion that Kansas City is a football town. Sure, they'll back a winning baseball team, but it's still a football town.

I agree that KC is still a football town, but the banner flying days for the Chiefs are likely over. Too much apathy has set in, plus the addition of an alternative option, at least in the short run.

In the first 20 years of the franchise history, they never finished lower than 5th in the AL West. 15 of the 20 years either 1st or 2nd in the division. Royals just hit their decline in probably the worst time possible. Brett era had just gotten over, they had a really good team in 1994 but then strike hit. Strike really did paralyze baseball pretty good. NFL took off stronger then (Chiefs were in the last year of Joe Montana era) and Jordan was the NBA. Baseball started to come back with the McGwire and Sosa home run chase and Ripken's streak but the Royals kept fumbling away. Traded away their 3 superstars and got back nothing really. Then the 4 out of 5 100 loss seasons just bottomed out. All of this combined with the Cardinals rise to their winning streak. That just ate away with most of outstate Missouri fan base. Not to mention Iowa, parts of Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas etc. Franchise bottomed out for 17 years from the strike until 2013.

Football is basically king across all of America anyways. Hell even in St. Louis, the Rams still drew decent and get good TV ratings as well. It's just the NFL beast.

The banner stuff wasn't just about the play on the field. It was about the Gestapo type organization that Pioli was running. The dick made the entire organization toxic in all phases. Even when the Royals were in 100 loss seasons, the K was still enjoyable to go to even if the product was horrible.

Its a great baseball city. Royals fans do understand the game and are passionate. The fan base is young old black white male female.

Its a good football city. It does not have any decent competition, MU and KU sort of have their homer types but generally both are uninteresting to the masses. The Chiefs have an amazing stadium and at least Carl knew the tailgating was essential to filling seats. Now its lost the shine it had. Pioli ****ed up the entire parking experience and tailgating. And the product has gone to shit as tickets went up. Stll, its easy to be a Chief fan cause Denver eats shit and the Rams are a joke

Despite not having a team, id have to say 🏀

This cannot not be understated. I know I turned my back on my first sports love. I was finished with MLB. And the Royals becoming a yearly embarrassment made it easy for me to stay mad. It wasn't until about 5-6 years ago when I was tending bar and started watching playoff baseball again that I started realizing how much I missed the game and started the process of forgiving.

I would also add that the resolution that came out of that strike hurt just as much. All of the sudden KC as a small market team could not compete with the Yanks they way they had before. I believe that had as much to do with a lack of a fan revolt as anything: the perception that sure, the club could do more, but they were too disadvantaged to do enough so why bother?

Thankfully, it has been figured out that there are ways to compensate for that disadvantage and we all love baseball again.

If the Chiefs ever decide to get serious about winning, it can be both

its a meat eating town

A soccer town!/ |douche|

FYP

Probably not because the weather most likely wouldnt be nearly as nice in early Feb

Seems to me that anymore baseball is much more democratic in general. More games, generally the cost is lower, not much of a chance to have some asshead pour a beer on your kid's head.

Baseball can have greater participation across the city than football can because of the cost of tickets and the much smaller number of games.

This has always been a baseball town, it just took us 15 years to get over the bitterness over the strike and years of non-ownership and then ownership that hadn't quite figured out that fielding a winner could be more profitable than fielding a team that was always just on the cusp of breaking through.

Whichever team is winning pretty much. It's honestly just a sports town, both the Chiefs and the Royals get a lot of love.

its a bidet town!

They'd have at least one dude driving up from Louisiana.

And another from Florida

Right now its a baseball town but this town hasnt had a great football team sense the 60s. And no the Marty era wasnt great football. You have to finish. You cant drop to the ground and curl up in a ball once the regular season is over.

This Royals team though is a team for the ages. They are so clutch and play with such heart, and just have that rare ability to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat no matter how insurmountable it seems.

While the Chiefs on the other hand have been spectacular at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory for the better part of their history.

With the Royals your always thinking what are they going to do to pull this out. And they always come up with a different way to win.

With the Chiefs your always thinking what are they going to do to blow this. And they always come up with a different way to loose.

KANSAS CITY IS A SPORTS TOWN!!! Give us a sports team, we'll support the shit out of it!

Pretty much.

KC is a KC town. Anything KC related is backed 100%...but thats sinilar to many places. Just that this place isnt overrun by transients from out of town, whIch keeps the hometown spirit

I don't live in KC anymore, but most fans there seem to be like me. A championship for either team is / would be exhilarating beyond words. It's a great city for major sports, period.

I think KC is/was a FB town.

I also think this WS win and another year or two of typical Chiefs play and that will change.

There are kids who have been born and graduated from college that have never known a Chiefs playoff win. They are younger adults with families now while the Royals are the best in the world.

What would you dress your kid in? Who would you take your family to go see?...

Meh...apples and oranges. More fans that are hard core about the Chiefs AND the NFL out there. Fewer fans that are hard-core about the Royals AND MLB out there. We interact with the teams and the overall-sports differently.

Now...if you want to talk about the masses of average fans and casual fans, we're a baseball town - and I don't think it's particularly close.

The "true fan" argument of filling the seats -even when the team is horrible - is stupid. From my perspective, I'm a true fan when I'm demanding more from my sports franchise than they're giving. Sometimes that means I'm not going to go to many games - they can do better and don't deserve my money until they right the ship. If attendance during down-times is the gauge...well...then I guess you buy into the "true fan" argument. I do not.

In the end...I think/hope most of us are fans of the Royals and the Chiefs. No need to pit the two against one another. There's enough of an inferiority complex to KC...don't need to turn on ourselves.

World Championships in my lifetime :

Royals : 2
Chiefs : 0

Also...don't under-estimate the damage to the NFL as a product with the next/younger generation. Two of the most significant examples:

1. "No fun league" effect. The constant rule changes continue to make the NFL a product that's becoming increasingly difficult to love.

2. The concussion effect. Living in football-crazy TX and having a couple of buddies that played college football, I'm shocked at how many of these guys are not letting their kids play football now. Football - over just the last hand full of years - has declined sharply in youth leagues. It's definitely runner-up to baseball and soccer leagues. This is new...and I'm sure it will affect things 20 years from now.

It's still football. Football is the most popular sport in the country by a wide margin and KC fits right in with most of the other cities that have teams in both sports. That doesn't mean they don't like baseball too, but I think that most the people in KC would prefer a Super Bowl over a World Series.

This I agree with.

I honestly don't see any chance of a SB victory in my lifetime. There's no urgency here.

Clark doesn't press the issue. It's all about patience. Give it time. Let it grow.

Huge contrast between him and how Denver has, and has always had, a win now approach...

From remembering the 80s teams and crowds. It is baseball. They just forgot because of the death, lack of spending and refusal to build a winner for so long. The Chiefs flirted in the mid 90s.. But died off quickly. And if fans ever get smart and quit spending money on the chiefs, they might see a real change in ideology of the franchise.

But baseball city.

What are you talking about the Chiefs "flirting" in the mid 90s. If talking about championships than yes. If talking about contending winner, No. In the 1990s (not mid 90s) the Chiefs had the 3rd most wins of all NFL teams during the decade. The lack of postseason wins will be a constant reminder of what if, but to imply they flirted with our attention is wrong. This city was absolutely on fire about the Chiefs when DT and Marty were here.

Well the NFL has gotten really bad in a lot of ways and it seems to be getting worse and worse...I don't find the league to be watchable.