Missouri sports betting: The people have spoken

Missouri is on track to become the 39th state to welcome a legal sports betting market after voters approved a legalization ballot measure in November.

Gaming America examines the state’s progress and highlights key moments during Missouri’s journey toward expanded gambling, even if recent delays have altered the prospective timeline.

Welcoming sports betting within Missouri’s borders has involved several steps in the legal process, including bringing the matter before voters during the last election. Missouri law allows the Gaming Commission to distribute 13 gaming licenses. However, these can only go to gaming facilities that are located on the Missouri River and Mississippi River.

Mixed views of the ballot measure

Last year, the St. Louis City Democratic Central Committee agreed to support state and city ballot questions addressed to voters. Winning for Missouri Education was one of the groups that supported Amendment 2 and maintained that making room for a sports betting market could bring in funding for education around the state.

However, Amendment 2, which addressed whether the state of Missouri will welcome sports betting within its borders, was not part of the measures the committee said it would support. Amendment 2 was an attempt to amend the state’s Constitution and allow legal sports betting through online platforms, casinos and professional sports teams. The proposal would also implement a 10% tax on sports betting revenue.

But not everyone was in favor of Amendment 2 as presented, which resulted in opposition and debate last summer.The Attorney General candidate Elad Gross pushed back against the proposal because of concern that a legalized sports betting market might not generate enough tax revenue to fund problem gambling resources, according to local news sources.

The Missourians Against the Deceptive Online Gambling Amendment also voiced concerns. The petition to put Amendment 2 before voters in November was questioned, specifically around whether it had gained the required number of signatures. By May, though, professional sports teams around the state had collected more than 340,000 signatures on a petition to bring the market to Missouri.

The issue of petition signatures

During August, Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft’s office confirmed that Amendment 2 will be on the ballot.In addition to the sports betting amendment, another ballot campaign sought to collect signatures in support of allowing a new casino near Lake of the Ozarks. However, the Secretary of State noted that the new casino proposal failed to gain enough signatures.

Weeks of debate followed on whether voters would have a say on Amendment 2. After intense discussion regarding whether a petition to put the issue on November’s ballot was valid, Missouri Judge Daniel Green, a Circuit Court Judge in Cole County, struck down an attempt to invalidate the petition.

This gave Missouri voters a chance to pull the lever in favor of a legal sports betting market. November’s ballot also received record-setting funding.

Mobile operators DraftKings and FanDuel contributed $43m toward the measure’s support. However, Caesars Entertainment helped to fund the opposition campaign by contributing $14m. In addition to legalized sports betting, voters would have a voice in whether a new casino would be welcome near Lake of the Ozarks.Indeed, the Court found that the petition for Amendment 5 also had the required number of signatures.

The people have spoken

The vote to authorize sports betting in Missouri was a close one during election night. The ballot measure initially received 50.05% approval after votes state-wide were counted. However, more votes in favor of Amendment 2 continued to come in as Christian County wrapped up its counting process. The Christian County Clerk added 9,800 votes to its previously submitted certified total. The additional votes tallied came from mail-in, absentee and provisional ballots.

Clerk Paula Brumfield had postponed the count on election night because shutting down the machines that night to count votes “would have erased all of the ballot data,” according to local news reports. She said the County did not report the results right away because it did not expect a high turnout and had run out of machines.

“We just did not have another machine to feed those provisional and those military in, so we had to keep those machines open to be able to feed them to be counted,” Brumfield told local news.

Through Amendment 2 passed in November, voters said no to Amendment 5, a decision that blocked the new casino in the Lake of the Ozarks area. Brumfield went on to note that the decision to postpone the count “was made with the agreement of the Republican and Democratic party representatives in the office.”

However, Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft disagreed with the decision. He said in a statement, “Those numbers could have been reported on election night. They should have been reported on election night.”

The number of registered voters in the county is 68,453. Brumfield told locals news that Christian County voter turnout reached 75%. She commented, “We knew we would be busy, but we just had high volumes coming through the doors.”

What’s next for Missouri?

Those waiting for sports betting to take root in Missouri could have an open market by the summer, although recent delays have pushed the exact date back. Under the terms of Amendment 2, a legal market would need to be in place state-wide by December. However, Missouri Gaming Commission Chair Jan Zimmerman told NPR Kansas City that she “expects wagers to be placed by summer.”

She went on to add, “There’s some advantages, I guess, to being relatively late to the game. The Missouri Gaming Commission is responsible for maintaining the integrity of the process, the integrity of gambling within the state of Missouri, and so we really can’t afford to have anyone that’s inappropriate, or shouldn’t be involved in the gaming industry.”

To get the market in place, the state regulator will need to draft regulations that would later require the Governor and the Secretary of State’s approval. The Gaming Commission could then issue gambling licenses after a 30-day public input period has passed. However, sports betting might not be the only newcomer to the state.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that Missouri lawmakers recently examined plans to legalize slot games state-wide. Both sides of the issue were brought to the House Emerging Issues Committee in late January. Analysis of the plans found that video gambling machines at gas stations and bars “could generate more than $343m in revenue for the state” if they are legalized. However, a nonpartisan financial review has posed the question of whether welcoming these games could cause riverboat casinos to lose money. The report examined trends in Illinois, a state that allows machines of this kind.

According to the findings, “Illinois saw a 15% decline in state revenue at casinos in the first five years of operation, while the newly legalized slot machines grew by nearly 900%.” The analysis added, “The act would likely also result in reductions in casino taxes and admission fees paid to local governments in home dock cities.”

Currently, 38 states and the District of Columbia offer some form of legal sports betting. Naturally, the market has grown significantly since the Supreme Court overturned PASPA in May 2018. But there is still more to come…

Laura Mack

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