Study: Kansas City is Saturated with Sports Franchises

Recently, Portfolio.com analyzed 82 professional sports markets to determine which cities were overextended with their sports franchises and which ones had room for more teams.

How did they come up with these "saturation" numbers and how did Kansas City do?

It's there, after the jump.

Portfolio took the total personal income of a city (the sum of all income earned by residents in an area) and compared it against team revenue and ticket prices to determine a city's capability to support the franchises. Make sense? Take how much a team makes and how much ticket prices are and compare it against how much cash a city makes in a year. The higher the total personal income, the higher the ability a city has to support more franchises.

Portfolio determined these to be the minimum total personal income thresholds for each league:

• MLB - $86.7 billion
• NFL - $37.3 billion
• MLS - $13.9 billion

KC has all three of these franchises - the Royals, Chiefs and the Wizards. Kansas City would need a total personal income of $137.9 billion each year to "officially" be able to support all three of these.

As you probably guessed, KC falls short - $57 billion short in fact. Kansas City's total personal income in 2008 was $80.8 billion.

The Biz Journal's study doesn't suggest that KC is going to lose a franchise - only suggesting that the city will have issues with attendance and revenue in these franchises in the near future.

This study does suggest that supporting a new sports franchise, say in the Sprint Center downtown, would be very difficult for Kansas City.

I completely agree. The idea that came up a few years ago about Kansas City getting an NHL or an NBA team seemed ludicrous to me. KC is a football town at heart and frankly I don't think it's citizens really have that much interest in baseball, hockey or basketball.

If we're talking about an NFL television blackout for the city's most beloved franchise, how in the hell could Kansas City support any new franchise?

Anybody who is pulling for Kansas City to get an NHL or NBA team is legitimately crazy. Or stands to make a lot of money. It's one of those two.