Hold your bets: Legal Missouri sports betting won’t start until summer 2025 – Springfield Daily Citizen

Enthused about legalization of sports betting in Missouri? Don’t get in a rush to place bets on this season’s Kansas City Chiefs games — or even the Super Bowl next February.

While Missourians this week narrowly approved a constitutional amendment to allow sports betting, the earliest legal bets will be placed in Missouri is summer 2025.

“I would hate to get anybody’s expectation up that they would be able to place a sports bet here in Missouri in the next month or two,” said Jack Cardetti, a spokesperson for Winning for Missouri Education, the committee that promoted Amendment 2.

The sports betting industry will be regulated by the Missouri Gaming Commission (MGC), which expects the first legal wagers to be placed in the state mid-to-late summer 2025, said Chairman Jan Zimmerman. There’s a large load of regulatory work that needs to be done before the first bets are placed.

“The constitutional language says we have to be up and running by December 1 of 2025, but it’s our hope we get there much sooner than that,” Zimmerman said in a phone interview Nov. 7.

“Optimistically, in order to get through all those administrative processes, we’re looking mid-to-late summer (2025) to get all of those things in place.”

In one of the tightest races of election night, Missourians narrowly decided to amend the state constitution to allow sports betting. With a difference of just under 7,500 votes, about 50.1% of Missouri voters approved Amendment 2, while 49.9% voted no. Missouri joins 38 U.S. states and Washington D.C. in allowing sports wagering, according to the American Gaming Association.

Missouri to use other states as model to build sports waging regulatory framework

As Missouri becomes the 39th state to legalize sports wagering, MGC will base its regulatory framework on the systems in place in other states, Zimmerman said.

“The advantage … to being relatively late to the game with sports betting is that there are a number of states all across the United States who have had sports betting for a while,” Zimmerman said. “That gives us the opportunity to pick and choose and talk to those folks on what works well and what doesn’t.”

MGC staff “have been reaching out to their counterparts at gaming commissions across the United States to talk about those rules and regulations (and) to talk about the application process.”

MGC has already started laying out that regulatory framework, which will ultimately have to be approved by the governor’s office, Zimmerman said. The regulations will stipulate the application process for a sports wagering venue to be licensed.

The commission expects the sports betting venue applications will open sometime in spring 2025, Zimmerman said. Those applications will take months to approve, including a background investigation by the gaming division of the Missouri State Highway Patrol.

“We’re talking about several months between applying (and) us getting the application,” Zimmerman said.

Commission has been eyeing sports betting for years

The committee that promoted Amendment 2, Winning for Missouri Education, have full faith in MGC as regulators, said spokesperson Jack Cardetti.

“The gaming commission are seasoned regulators that have lots of experience,” Cardetti said. “The constitution does give the Missouri Gaming Commission some rulemaking authority, so the expectation is that they’ll start laying out more specific rules around” sports betting.

Winning for Missouri Education hopes sports betting is in place before the December 2025 deadline, Cardetti said.

“The initiative lays out a deadline … but it’s our hope and expectation that they would be able to implement that sooner than the deadline,” Cardetti said.

The spokesperson does not want to give Missourians false hope that bets could happen this year. In neighboring Kansas, which passed legislation legalizing sports wagering in 2022, it took about four months for the program to be implemented after the governor signed the bill.

Because sports betting was added to the Missouri Constitution through a petition process instead of a legislative route, regulators don’t have too much wiggle room when it comes to interpretation, Zimmerman said.

“This was somewhat unique in that it wasn’t legislation it was an initiative petition,” Zimmerman said. “By virtue of what it is, we can’t tweak the language, we can’t add something on, we can’t take something away.”

“This drives what the rules and regulations will look like because we have to follow the exact language.”

The commission has been eyeing the sports betting industry and how best to regulate it in Missouri way before the Nov. 5 election, Zimmerman said. Some form of a bill that would allow sports wagering has been put before Missouri legislators for years, giving the commission ample time to prepare.

MGC has “been working long and hard on the possibility of sports betting, you know, long before the election took place on Tuesday.”

Revenue from Amendment 2 to go to Missouri education

The commission has 82 full time employees who oversee everything from bingo to casinos to fantasy sports, Zimmerman said. About six employees are solely focused on implementing sports betting. More positions will be hired as the need is determined and there is a clearer picture of revenue.

“We don’t know what the revenue is going to look like as far as this is concerned,” Zimmerman said. “So not yet, we are not adding anyone at this time.”

The sports betting amendment became the most expensive ballot issue campaign in state history. Winning for Missouri Education, the committee promoting Amendment 2, reported Oct. 28 it had raised $40.75 million since beginning its initiative campaign in January, according to Missouri Ethics Commission data.

Winning for Missouri Education is funded by online sports betting apps, with costs split evenly by DK Crown Holdings, owner of DraftKings, and BetFair Interactive, owner of FanDuel.

Seven of Missouri’s eight neighboring states, including Kansas and Illinois, which passed legislation in 2019 to allow sports betting, already allow sporting gambling.

The new law “should generate tens of millions of dollars that actually stay here in Missouri instead of actively pushing Missourians to seven of our neighboring states that already have sports betting,” Cardetti said.

The group behind the petition has data that shows people in Missouri tried to place bets 11.1 million times in the first seven weeks of the NFL season.

“That gives you the sort of magnitude on how much interest there is out there,” Cardetti said.

MGC Chairman Zimmerman said the amendment was passed with the intention of providing funding for education and the commission is keeping that close to the heart as it lays out the groundwork for implementation.

“It’s my hope that if that was the intention, to provide funding for education, that it does exactly that,” Zimmerman said.

“Not to sound naive, it’s my hope that, you know, sports betting will provide a lot of money to education.”

Ryan Collins

Ryan Collins is the business and economic development reporter for the Springfield Daily Citizen. Collins graduated from Glendale High School in 2011 before studying journalism and economics at the University of Missouri-Columbia. He previously worked for Bloomberg News. Contact him at (417) 849-2570 or rcollins@sgfcitizen.org. More by Ryan Collins