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It’s a bittersweet but needed move, says the American Royal’s five-year outgoing president and chief executive officer, Bob Petersen.

(All other American Royal events will still be held in the West Bottoms.) The West Bottoms is a 36-year tradition, yet it can only fit approximately 562 teams in its limiting 85,000 square feet (about a football field and a half) and there’s really no place for noncompeting fans to witness the action or eat barbecue.

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The Kansas City-based competition has grown so large that the American Royal leadership has moved the World Series of Barbecue from the West Bottoms to the Truman Sports Complex at Arrowhead Stadium this year. To qualify for the invitational, a team must be named a Grand Champion, the highest honor, in an American Royal-sanctioned contest. It consists of two competitions: the invitational and the open. The American Royal traces its beginnings to 1899 when it began as The National Hereford Show.

The barbecue competition began in 1980 as a fundraiser for the American Royal programs, which mostly benefit youth, scholarship and education.

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For the competitors, it’s the scent of equal parts camaraderie and cutthroat perfectionism, plus the chance for glory. It’s the kind of aroma that triggers star-spangled ancestral memories of families and friends sitting out by the grill or barbecue pit. Wafting from the barbecue mecca is a veil of thick, sweet smoke. And competition ‘cue is considerably better, as it should be, with cooks focusing on just enough meat to feed six judges, compared to the 5,000 pounds some restaurants dole out daily. Meat must be served in an unmarked Styrofoam container with no garnish other than green lettuce, parsley or cilantro. At The American Royal and most other competitions, meat that falls off the bone is considered overcooked. What competitive pitmasters have spent years perfecting isn’t what you’ll typically eat in a restaurant. Yet, each team has an equal chance in the eight-point scaled blind judging. Every end of the barbecue-enthusiast spectrum is represented. Some competitors are in it for fun and others for publicity some are able to make a living out of the prize money, and some of these weekend warriors just use it to cover costs for the next competition. And you see as many good ol’ backcountry boys wielding $200 Weber Kettles in the beds of rusting pickups as you do sponsored, third-generation teams rolling in with RV mansions and toting $20,000 custom grills. They’ve traveled here from 32 states and five different countries.

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A little more than a century later, it completed the circle of life as host of the self-proclaimed largest barbecue competition in the nation – the American Royal World Series of Barbecue.Įach year, makeshift canopy cities form overnight full of every type of competitor. In the late 1800s, the West Bottoms was historically home to the Kansas City Livestock Exchange and Stockyards. At the low-lying junction of the Missouri and Kansas rivers rests Kansas City’s West Bottoms district.