After years of legislative headaches, Missouri sports betting is officially on its way, with the Show-Me State voting to pass a sports betting constitutional amendment on Tuesday.
The amendment, which just narrowly passed by a still unofficial count of less than 7,500 votes out of nearly three million ballots cast, sets the stage for sports betting operators to join the 38 states and Washington D.C. that have some form of wagering on the books - while becoming the sixth state to pass wagering via a ballot measure.
Missouri joins a list that includes Arkansas, Colorado, Maryland, New Jersey and South Dakota in American states that did just that, thus allowing residents of the state that are at least 21 years of age to bet on sports at retail and mobile sportsbooks across the state, no later than Dec. 1, 2025.
Sportsbooks, Teams Helped Initiative Get Over Line
As part of the constitutional amendment, a sports wagering tax rate of 10% would be applied to all wagers placed in the state, with national operators like DraftKings and FanDuel Sportsbook (who donated $20.125 million apiece to the yes side), along with the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals, St. Louis Blues and Cardinals all coming out in support of the initiative in the months running up to Tuesday’s vote.
Jack Cardetti, who serves as the spokesperson for Winning Missouri Education, said in a statement about Amendment 2: "Missouri is one of only about a dozen states that hasn't legalized sports betting. And that means we lose out on millions of dollars that could be going to our classrooms, and millions of dollars of economic opportunity."
The initiative allows the state’s six major sports franchises and the six companies that operate the state’s 13 licensed casinos to partner with a sports betting operator that could take wagers from people 21 and older. In addition, two more licenses will be untethered and awarded by the state.
Licenses for brick-and-mortar sportsbooks cost no more than $250,000, and those for online Missouri betting apps would not exceed $500,000.
Assuming the amendment vote is made official - the certification deadline is Nov. 20 - expect DraftKings, FanDuel, BetMGM, Caesars, Fanatics, ESPN BET and bet365 to seek licenses. Other possibilities include Circa, Underdog, Hard Rock, Betr and Bally.
Steve Bittenbender contributed to this report.
How Missouri Got Here
The most recent failed attempt at passing sports betting legislation in Jefferson City came about in January, when Senate Bill 852 failed to make it out of the Missouri Senate’s Appropriations Committee, while similar bills met the same fate in the state’s upper chamber in 2022 and 2023, with Sen. Denny Hoskins of Warrensburg providing stiff resistance to any gaming bills that did not include legalization of video lottery terminals in the state.
The winning initiative was one of four that were submitted to the Missouri Secretary of State last September, with the eventual winning option gathering more than 340,000 signatures, easily clearing the state’s 180,000 signature standard.
While we won’t know the exact details about sports betting until the Missouri Gaming Commission comes up with their slate of draft regulations at some point next year, we do know that the initiative could allow up to 19 retail and 21 online wagering licenses to be allocated, with projections showing the state taking in $11.75 million in initial licensing fees, to go with $28.9 million in tax revenue from legalized wagering.
USA Today photo by Jeff Curry.
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