Missouri Sports Betting Will Not “Happen Overnight”

Access to our best sports betting sites probably won't happen as quickly as some residents of Missouri wish it would.

The Missouri Gaming Commission (MGC) has until December 2025 to launch Missouri sports betting after state election officials certified November’s ballot results last week. Amendment 2 passed by a small margin of less than 3,000 votes, paving the way for legal online and retail sports betting in the state. Speaking with , Missouri State University Finance and Economics Professor David Mitchell said such a launch “doesn’t happen overnight.”

“It takes time to get those things in place. Licenses, do background checks on people to make sure businesses are set up and websites and everything. It just doesn’t happen overnight,” said Mitchell. “It’s more of an operational constraint than it is a legal constraint.”

The MGC aims to launch the market before the summer, ahead of the 2025-26 NFL season. It will now establish rules and regulations for the market and award licenses.

Potential impacts of legalization

Mitchell commented on the possibility of a rise in gambling addictions as a result of the launch. He said: “Gambling takes away savings. They dissave as much. They don’t save for retirement. That has a tendency to not only hurt them today but also hurt them in the future.”

Additionally, the Professor does not believe that sports betting legalization will significantly impact Missouri, based on the $9 million that Kansas sports betting contributed in tax revenue.

“You’re really more likely to actually have people divert their spending that they were doing on cars and clothes and food, etc...from those particular things which would be more helpful for the economy, towards gambling and betting which tend to not help the economy very much,” commented Professor Mitchell.

Meanwhile, the campaign behind the amendment, Winning for Missouri Education, believes that sports betting legalization will generate more than $100 million for the state’s schools and teachers over the next five years.

Moving the business in-state

Up until now, Missourians have been traveling across the border to neighboring Kansas to bet on their favorite sports teams. Last week, state officials spoke out about what legalization could mean for Kansas. Kansas Lottery Spokesman Cory Thone expects that the impact will be minimal. Speaking with a last week, he said:

“For a lot of these people that live in Missouri that maybe were coming to Kansas, I would expect them to keep their Kansas account so maybe when they are in the state they will make a bet when they are here but they also have options somewhere else as well.”

However, sports bettor Johan Collins has shared his excitement for sports betting to launch in Missouri. He said, “Now you just have a booker from out of state, and he places the bet and gets a percentage. That’s how it is now. But soon, you won’t have to do that anymore, just do it in-state, which will be really good.”

Missouri joins a total of 38 states and Washington, D.C., where sports betting is already legal.