Missouri Sports Betting Legislation Gains Serious Support

Dave Schwab Sports Betting Expert

3 minute read

The effort to bring legal sports betting to the state of Missouri added some serious clout through a new coalition. While there are several gambling extension bills under consideration, the end game for this new coalition is the addition of legal sports betting in the state.

Missouri is home to several professional sports franchises representing three of the four biggest US sports leagues. Leading the way is the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs.

Major League Baseball is represented by the St. Louis Cardinals in the National League and the Kansas City Royals in the American League. Rounding out this group is the NHL’s St. Louis Blues.

St. Louis SC is a planned expansion team for Major League Soccer and the Kansas City Current is one of the newest members of the National Women’s Soccer league.

All six of these pro franchises have thrown their support behind any legislative effort that brings legal sports betting to Missouri.

Adding even more weight to this coalition are the 14 land-based casinos in the state. Leading the way in this combined effort is Caesars Entertainment and Penn National Gaming with in-state gaming venues.

Both of these casino gaming entertainment companies also happen to be major players in the legal US sports betting industry.

The coalition of retail casinos and pro sport franchises have centered their support around two specific state Senate bills. Both SB 1046 and SB 1061 are currently awaiting committee assignments. State lawmakers in the House are working on companion bills at this time.

While there are some differences between the two pieces of legislation, one common bond for pro teams would be a mobile sports betting license. A unique aspect of these bills is an exclusivity zone around Missouri stadiums and arenas.

Each team could partner with a sportsbook operator to offer mobile sports betting in a 400-yard radius around their home sports venue. An example given was Arrowhead Stadium as the home field of the Kansas City Chiefs. Sports fans could use a mobile app such as FanDuel or BetMGM within 400 yards of the stadium.

This would give each team an added revenue stream. This would also pave the way for major US-based sportsbooks to gain entry into the state.

The primary benefit from either bill for in-state casinos would be up to three online sports betting skins (or betting platforms) to handle mobile bets.

Another big perk for casinos in each bill is no added language to permit legal video lottery terminals (VLT’s) in the state. This form of grey market gambling has been a thorn in the side of the Missouri casino industry for quite some time.

VLT operators have been lobbying for this change. However, their small presence in the state has been unable to forward the cause with lawmakers.

There is quite a bit of public support behind both SB 1046 and SB 1061. This is compared to all the gambling expansion legislation that is currently under consideration in Missouri. Most of this support centers around the legalization of betting on sports and in-state teams such as the Chiefs and Cardinals.

Written by Dave Schwab, our US Sports Betting Industry Expert. You can learn more about our author's expertise here.

The featured image for this post was found on Wikimedia Commons. You can find out about the image's attribution here.

Dave Schwab

Dave Schwab has been covering the sports betting industry for the past 12 years as the main focus of his specialty marketing company for online content. This endeavor followed a previous career in the field of sales and marketing in the wholesaling sector.Most of his weekly pieces focus on the rapidly expanding legal US sports betting industry. However, he still does extensive work covering betting angles that can provide a competitive edge to avid players. Dave believes that it is always a challenge to take past results and current form to try and correctly determine a future result. Sports brings out the unpredictability in what should be a fairly predictable outcome based on the stats, facts and recent trends in a particular matchup. More from Dave Schwab