As the Chiefs embark on the historic opportunity to become the first NFL team to win three consecutive Super Bowls, it’s taking a true franchise-wide effort to block the outside noise and accomplish the goal at hand.

“Our job is to eliminate those distractions from the football team,” Mark Donovan, who leads Kansas City’s business efforts as team president, tells Front Office Sports. But it’s not always that simple. “You can’t ignore it,” Donovan says of three-peat talk. “So, we have been pretty aggressive and strategic on: How can we utilize this opportunity?” 

Before accepting any off-field opportunity—another sponsor, media partner, etc.—the Chiefs evaluate whether it will attract the right attention. “You can imagine the opportunities that have come across our desk since last year are significant,” Donovan says. “And you’ve got to take a measured approach to that. We’ve got to take advantage of the right ones. We’ve gotta execute them the right way. But we also have to turn down a lot.”

Home Sweet Home

Another potential distraction the Chiefs dealt with over the offseason was a sticky stadium situation. The franchise is keeping its options open after voters in Jackson County, Mo., nixed a proposed sales tax measure to fund Arrowhead Stadium renovations. Since then, Kansas officials have tried to lure the NFL team across the state line.

While there’s no deadline in place to solidify a stadium plan, Donovan admits the Chiefs’ lease expiring in early 2031 makes things tight. “We’re going to need a place to play that next season,” he says. “If you do that timeline: If you’re renovating the stadium, it’s four or five years. If you’re building a new stadium with infrastructure, new site, and everything else, it’s probably five or six years.”

Conversations are continuing, evidenced by the Chiefs’ annual kickoff luncheon last week being attended by governors from both Missouri and Kansas for the first time.

Cash Flow

Chiefs owner Clark Hunt has said his franchise—which Forbes ranked as the 24th-most-valuable in the NFL at $4.85 billion—isn’t thinking about adding a private equity investor right now. But that could change down the road, as ownership groups across the league look for more liquidity and flexibility.

“Certain clubs are going to look at it as a way to help finance their investment, whether it’s a stadium or something else,” Donovan says of the NFL’s new private equity policy. “And it’s something that we will look at in the future.”

International Flair

Last season, the Chiefs played in the NFL’s first game in Frankfurt, Germany. Donovan says Kansas City would love to go back abroad, if given the chance. “One of the challenges with playing again in Germany is a lot of teams have seen the success that we and other franchises have had, and everybody’s getting in line to play,” he says.

The Chiefs rank near the top of the league in revenue generated from international sponsors, per Donovan, boosted by several multi-year corporate deals with German brands.

Whether it’s in Europe, Kansas City, or anywhere else, the Chiefs are embracing the spotlight as two-time defending Super Bowl champions. “Everybody talks about the stress and the pressure of being in a position like this,” Donovan says. “We look at it—and I know this team looks at it—differently. They look at it as: We worked really hard to be in this position, let’s go take advantage of it.”

The NFL is a television-driven league, with the largest individual chunk of its revenue deriving from domestic media deals generating roughly $12 billion annually. But the league’s in-person presence is taking on a new level of prominence as a growing group of teams push for new or renovated facilities.

New stadiums are under construction in Tennessee and Buffalo, funding deals were approved this past offseason in Jacksonville and Charlotte, and a three-year renovation plan recently began in Baltimore. But at least four other NFL teams are pushing to solidify their own venue futures, marking one of the largest collections of unsettled situations in this area in the last generation. Among the current issues:

• Chicago: A proposed $4.7 billion lakefront stadium is already facing significant pushback, including from Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker. Further progress before 2025 is unlikely as Pritzker said it would be “near impossible” for the team to get an agreement through the state legislature this fall.
• Cleveland: After weighing options between renovating the current downtown stadium and building a new $2.4 billion domed stadium near the airport, the Browns recently chose the latter. Like in Chicago, resistance to the plan has mounted quickly. But the team received a recent boost in a 20-year stadium naming rights deal with Huntington Bank that will carry over to a new facility, should one be built. 
• Kansas City: The two-time defending Super Bowl champions are in a highly enviable position, with local affinity for the team extremely strong and political leaders in both Missouri and Kansas jockeying to be the team’s long-term home. Chiefs owner Clark Hunt says he wants to take until January 2025 to evaluate stadium options before making a decision.
• Washington: The Commanders are looking at 2030 as the earliest date to build a new stadium, with the site of the team’s prior home, RFK Stadium, a potential option along with rival overtures from Maryland and Virginia. The team’s push to build a new venue has already been a years-long slog, but the Commanders and owner Josh Harris have the unique element of two states and the District of Columbia competing against each other.  

“We’re working super hard. I mean it’s taking up a lot of my own mind space to find our next home,” Harris said recently regarding the Commanders’ stadium site search. “We have conversations going with multiple jurisdictions. … As you peel the onion, things get more and more detailed, more and more advanced.”