A definite head of steam is building in Missouri, one of the few states left in the U.S. not to have legalized sports betting.
Despite the fact that sports betting is legal in all neighboring states, except Oklahoma, Missourians are among the inhabitants of just 12 U.S. states where the repeal of the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) in 2018 is yet to have triggered a change of law.
It’s not been for want of trying. Missouri Rep. Bart Korman kicked off his campaign to get sports betting added to the state’s list of legalized gambling activities way back in January 2018, five months before PASPA was repealed.
The state had already established a robust framework for the regulation of riverboat casinos in 1992. Korman’s plan was to allow the licensed casinos, and the state’s daily fantasy sports (DFS) operators, to offer sports betting. Seems simple.
But it wasn’t simple. Since then, attempts to get sports betting bills across the line have been repeatedly thwarted in the Missouri General Assembly, in part because of an ongoing row over whether video lottery terminals (VLTs) should be legalized.
VLTs tend to be a more controversial offering. In the U.K. they are known as fixed-odds betting terminals (FOBTs), because they are not allowed to work through the usual random number generator mechanism and, instead, offer results based on fixed odds. In the U.K. in 2019, after a lot of debate, the government cut the maximum bet for FOBTs from £100 to £2.
With all this in mind, it is perhaps not surprising that mingling the VLT issue with the campaign to legalize sports betting has stalled progress. However, it seems the main reason for the delay is the casinos resisting the potential competition, rather than a responsible gambling backlash.
At the end of last month though, there seemed to have been a breakthrough. A petition for state-wide mobile sports betting to be allowed in Missouri was submitted to secretary of state Jay Ashcroft with more than 340,000 signatures. People are clearly becoming impatient.
And let’s face it, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to have punters travelling across state lines to place a bet – which they are – boosting the coffers of states that have legalized, instead of Missouri’s own. It’s clearly reached a point where not legalizing is looking increasingly illogical.
Now, led by the state’s six professional sports franchises, the Winning for Missouri Education petition has the number of signatures needed to make it onto the November ballot. Providing Ashcroft authenticates the signatures, the issue can bypass the Senate and go to a public vote.
The Missouri Gaming Commission, which is responsible for the casino riverboats, DFS and charitable gaming already, would also regulate sports betting in the state, adding a maximum of two online gambling licenses into the mix. The state would tax sports wagering at 10%.
It is estimated that $30m in tax could be delivered by legalizing sports betting in Missouri, with $5m earmarked to support problem gambling initiatives and the rest being put towards the state’s public schools and the education system.
“Missouri is one of only about a dozen states that hasn’t legalized sports betting,” campaign spokesman Jack Cardetti told NPR’s The Politically Speaking Hour on St. Louis on the Air on April 19.
“And that means we lose out on millions of dollars that could be going to our classrooms, and millions of dollars of economic opportunity. So, if this ballot initiative passes, Missourians will be able to place sports bets in a responsible, regulated manner.”
Cardetti went on to point out that the state’s sports franchises are keen to make regulated betting part of their strategy to increase fan engagement. “They also are in a competitive disadvantage to other teams and other states that have this revenue stream,” he said.
Polls run by Emerson College and St. Louis University in February and March this year reported that at least 60% of Missourians support the legalization of sports betting, making it look increasingly likely that Missouri will roll out state-wide mobile and retail wagering within the next year.
