Missouri voters narrowly approve sports betting amendment • Missouri Independent

By the time the NFL playoffs begin in January, sports betting will be legal in Missouri.

The only remaining question now that voters approved Amendment 2 is whether bettors will use platforms licensed in Missouri or if players will have to use accounts linked to licenses from other states.

The result on sports wagering wasn’t clear until the final votes were reported from Greene County after 1:30 a.m. Wednesday. The southwest Missouri county voted 55% against sports betting, narrowing the statewide margin to just over 14,000 votes out of 2.9 million cast. 

The election didn’t go as well for the other gambling measure on the ballot. Voters said “no” to Amendment 5, which would have authorized a new casino near the Lake of the Ozarks. It is only the third time since 1980 that Missouri voters rejected a proposal to expand gambling in the state. 

With nearly all precincts reporting, Amendment 5 was losing 52% to 48%.

Winning for Missouri Education, the committee funded by the two biggest online bookmakers, FanDuel and DraftKings, poured a record of almost $41 million into the campaign. That proved to be just enough to overcome a $14 million opposition campaign funded by Caesars Entertainment, which pulled its television ads three weeks before Election Day.

Initially polling with an advantage of 20 percentage points, the narrow vote on Tuesday shows how effectively an opposition campaign undermined support.

New constitutional amendments become law 30 days after the election, so the first legal bets in Missouri could be placed as early as Dec. 5. 

Backers of Amendment 5, who spent $4.2 million to make the ballot and another $6 million on the fall campaign, were unable to overcome skepticism of the benefits of expanded gambling created by the anti-sports wagering campaign. 

Missouri voters last defeated a gambling measure in 2004 when voters rejected a proposal similar to Amendment 5. That would have authorized a licensed casino for the White River near Rockaway Beach in southwest Missouri. 

Under state law, casinos must be located within 1,000 feet of the main channel of either the Mississippi or Missouri rivers.

The only other gambling proposal to lose was a measure to allow wagering on simulcast horse races in 1992. Voters had approved parimutuel wagering on live horse races in 1984 but no track was built.

The initiative campaign to legalize sports betting emerged from years of frustration with the General Assembly, where a triangular debate pitted casinos and sports teams against video lottery proponents against ‘gray market’ games vendors who profit from inaction.

“We’re not extremely optimistic that that’s going to happen,” Mike Whittle, general counsel for the St. Louis Cardinals, said last year of the possibilities of legislative action. “I mean, we’ve kind of seen that movie way too many times.”

Missouri’s franchises from Major League Baseball, the NFL, the NHL, Major League Soccer and the National Women’s Soccer League provided the public face of the signature campaign.

The push to legalize sports wagering in Missouri began after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the federal law against wagering on sporting events in 2018. More than 35 states have legalized some form of the gambling since the court decision, including every state on Missouri’s border except Oklahoma.

Under the provisions of the amendment, each of six major professional sports teams could create a retail sports betting location within a district near its stadium. The teams could also provide fans with a branded online betting platform.

Each of the state’s six casino companies could also open a retail sportsbook at their casinos as well as offer an online platform.

And there would be two licenses for online betting companies without a link to a Missouri casino or sports team.

The profits from gambling would be taxed at 10%, but the measure allows deductions for promotional offers and federal taxes before the state revenue is calculated. 

An economic study produced for Winning for Missouri Education estimates that $21.8 billion will be wagered during the first five years after legalization and more than 98% of the bets will be placed online.

That same study pegs the net to the state over that period at $134 million. Revenue in the fifth year is estimated at $38.7 million, about $10 million more than the maximum annual revenue projected by the fiscal note for the ballot measure.

There will be gambling at the Lake of the Ozarks, but not in a casino licensed by the Missouri Gaming Commission.

The defeat of Amendment 5 means there will be no competition for a project launched in 2021 by the Osage Nation to have a property in Miller County taken into trust as ancestral lands where it could operate a casino and convention center.

The project is awaiting approval from federal officials. After that, the tribe and the state will negotiate a compact dividing responsibilities for law enforcement on the casino property. The agreement would also establish “taxation by the Indian tribe of such activity in amounts comparable to amounts assessed by the state for comparable activities.” 

Tribes have the right to offer gambling that mirrors what the state allows “for any purpose by any person, organization, or entity.”

If the state refuses to negotiate a compact, or does not do so in good faith, the tribe may sue in federal court.