Missourians can now legally place bets on sports.
The constitutional amendment, which Missourians passed in November 2024, went into effect on Monday.
It marks the end of a years-long effort to legalize sports betting in the state, one that ultimately came down to a vote of the people.
Derek Durst, of Ballwin, who voted to legalize sports betting, said he knows plenty of people who have crossed state lines to bet in Illinois and Kansas.
"It's like not the worst thing to keep the money in house for taxes. But it wasn't really based on that. I just kind of wanted it legal here, because it's inconvenient to drive to Illinois," Durst said.
It was a close approval of Amendment 2, which passed with 50.1% of the nearly 3 million votes cast.
Jack Cardetti, who was the spokesperson for the effort to win approval of Amendment 2 during the campaign, said one reason he thinks sports betting passed was that nearby states that already allow it. Of Missouri's eight surrounding states, all but Oklahoma allow sports betting.
"There's no reason to push Missourians to go give our border states economic development," Cardetti said.
Durst went to college in Iowa, one of those bordering states where sports betting was already legal. He said it was annoying to come back to a state where it wasn't.
"I never got to a point where I was like, 'Oh my God. Like, I need to gamble, I'm itching for it.' It's just like, 'Oh dang, there's some really good football games on this weekend. It'd be really nice if I could gamble,'" Durst said.
Before the constitutional amendment went to a vote, state lawmakers spent several years attempting to legalize sports betting. Those efforts were backed by Missouri's sports teams, including the St. Louis Blues.
"I think we would have preferred to have worked it through the legislature, and I think we would have spent a lot less money in the process of getting it passed. But ultimately, it just came down to letting the people decide," said Blues Chief Revenue and Marketing Officer Steve Chapman.
Chapman said legalizing sports betting in Missouri is a boon for the team in both revenue increases and fan engagement.
"You want to make any game interesting, put $20 on it, and all of a sudden the game's a lot more interesting than it was before," Chapman said. "So, whether you want to or don't want to, it's been going on, and that engagement and that ability for us to put our product out there is something that's very interesting for us."
Almost 40 states have legalized sports betting since a Supreme Court ruling in 2018 that allowed it.
Stephen Shapiro, a professor at the University of South Carolina who researches sport consumer behavior, said something he's seen with the rise of sports betting is the games drawing more attention.
"The more people bet on sports, the more content they're consuming," Shapiro said. "So, the more games they're watching, the more content related to those games, the more content related to sports gambling, for instance, information and knowledge about placing bets, all of that increases."
Shapiro said that while people may be engaging with more sports, they're also splitting their time on what they watch.
"They're more likely to watch multiple games, or pieces of games, maybe not even in their entirety, versus traditional fandom, where somebody would say, 'I'm a Chicago Bears fan, and I'm going to sit and watch that game in its entirety to see what the result is,'" Shapiro said.
Sports betting is also changing how people interact with sports.
Nathan Novemsky, a professor of marketing and psychology at Yale, compares some of the interest in sports betting to fantasy football.
"Many of the bets in sports gambling are not just only or even have anything to do with who's winning or losing the game. They could be about an individual person's performance," Novemsky said.
How to bet
In Missouri, people can now bet in person at casinos as well as through a variety of mobile apps. In order to offer sports betting, companies must be partnered with either a sports team or a casino.
The companies with mobile licenses include: DraftKings, FanDuel Sportsbook, Circa Sports, Fanatics Sportsbook, Caesars Sportsbook, BetMGM, Penn Sports Interactive and bet365.
Additionally, the Missouri Gaming Commission approved wagering retail licenses.
Two companies, DraftKings and Circa Sports, were granted untethered licenses by the commission. That means they can operate in the state without a partnership.
Circa Sports winning one of those licenses was a bit of a surprise, as many expected the second license to go to FanDuel.
Director of Operations Jeffrey Benson said he believes Circa Sports got the second license because it offers something different from FanDuel and DraftKings, which includes higher bet limits.
"I think limiting is a hot-button topic or issue within the industry, and we're a place that gives you a fair bet," Benson said.
Chief Customer Officer Shawn Henley said having that untethered license means DraftKings can put what it doesn't spend on third parties back into what it offers.
"We're really thankful and excited that we got one of the two licenses, because it just allows us to elevate the fan experience even further than we would otherwise, because we'll now have a little bit of a different economic situation to do so," Henley said.
Although it did not need to pair up with a sports team, DraftKings does have an agreement with the Blues. Henley said DraftKings wants to be where the fans are.
"Obviously, there's advertising benefits there, where we'll be showcased, we'll be front and center, but for us, we just find it as a way to get close to those fan bases and the teams themselves," Henley said.
For the Blues, Chapman said there is a business transaction aspect of creating that partnership, but he also echoed the importance of fan outreach.
"We have a strong, very engaged fan base who love the Blues, and I think that's what these partners see," Chapman said.
Sports betting is coming to Missouri in the wake of recent betting scandals in professional sports. Both the NBA and MLB have been touched by indictments.
Henley argues the legalization of sports betting has created a system in which cheating or manipulating games can be caught more quickly.
"It's because of the sophistication and the regulation and the gaming operators on the legal market. If it was on the illegal side, it'd be way more difficult to catch, whereas on the legal side, we have models, and we're looking for things that are anomalies," Henley said.
Additionally, the increase in sports betting advertising creates its own challenges.
Even though Durst said he plans to bet, he does think the ads are excessive.
"I can't open TikTok or Instagram without getting three or four ads about, 'Hey, Missouri residents, gambling is about to start,' and that's gotten a little much. And I can definitely see how that can be frustrating or even predatory," Durst said.
Brian Cooper, of Manchester, who also voted to pass sports betting in Missouri, said he plans on betting a little. But he also is torn on how it's being advertised and its availability.
"With it being available on the phones. It's like putting an addiction on top of an addiction, because people are addicted to their phones, and some people are going to get addicted to sports betting. So, you've got a double whammy with that," Cooper said.
Chapman sympathizes with the discontent over the amount of advertising. He said he expects it to diminish over time.
"I do think there's a little bit of an element of it's new, so it's a lot more noticeable right now," Chapman said.
State revenue
According to the Missouri Gaming Commission, a 10% tax will be applied on the adjusted gross revenue of sports betting operators. That revenue will first go to the commission to reimburse expenses incurred by regulating sports wagering.
Afterward, the greater of either $5 million or 10% of the annual tax revenues will go to the Missouri Department of Mental Health to address compulsive gambling.
Jennifer Johnson, of the Missouri Department of Mental Health, said department officials can't determine the needs that will pop up as sports betting goes live, but they are preparing the best they can.
"Can we get some campaigns out there for just public awareness, folks to understand what gambling and gaming and all of this kind of looks like now, because it's not the way it used to look, where folks would have to go into a casino. It's right there at your fingertips," Johnson said.
Johnson said the department plans to place that funding for problem gambling into essentially three buckets: treatment, prevention and education.
Cole Wogoman with the National Council on Problem Gambling said the requirement in Missouri's amendment for money to go toward problem gambling is something the council pushed for.
"It puts [Missouri] at an advantage to how a lot of states have handled this. Some states have no funding for problem gambling. Some states have literally pennies, you know, per capita on the dollar," Wogoman said.
Wogoman said the expansion of sports betting does create a risk for greater gambling addiction, but it also creates opportunities to intervene.
"When you have people gambling on their phones, you can track their data really, really well, and operators do that so they not only can keep track of who's winning, but they can also keep track of who's losing and who may be developing a problem," Wogoman said.
The remainder of the money earned by the state will go to the Missouri Department of Education.
Missouri Gaming Commission Chair Jan Zimmerman said that while she doesn't plan to participate in sports wagering, she did vote for the amendment.
"I really, truly hope that it makes a lot of money for education and it satisfies a need for the citizens of Missouri," she said.
Zimmerman said it's too soon to predict the revenue the state will see, but there are some initial estimates of $20 million to $28 million annually.
"We'll know way more by the time we get through this first year, obviously, and see does that slim margin of passage mean that not as many people are going to sports wager in Missouri as was hoped?" Zimmerman said.
As to how the Blues will spend the revenue it will earn from legalized sports betting, Chapman says the team has one main objective.
"I'll put this as simplistically as possible: to pay to the salary cap so that we can try to win. That's our goal," Chapman said.
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