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November 5 was Election Day. Sure, the presidential candidates eat up all the attention, but voters across the country had other things in the ballot box.
In Missouri, sports betting was on the ballot. After a back-and-forth fight that surpassed $50 million in funding, a simple yes-or-no question around betting ended up on the ballot. The results? A yes, but barely.
Keep reading and we’ll tell you all about how Missouri became the 39th state to legalize sports betting in the United States.
Amendment 2 Barely Passes
The yes-or-no question was on the ballot as Amendment 2. It ended up just getting a hair above the 50 percent vote it needed to pass. Seriously, it didn’t get 51 percent but just slightly above 50. The margin of win was just 7,486 votes out of 2.9 million cast.
“Missouri has some of the best sports fans in the world and they showed up big for their favorite teams on Election Day,” Bill DeWitt III, President of the St. Louis Cardinals, said in a news release issued Wednesday.
The Cardinals were members of the Winning for Missouri Education committee that backed the initiative. Other local teams were also part of it including the Chiefs, Royals, Blues, SC, and Current. The name stems from the beneficiaries of the bill — the state’s education fund. Taxes earned off sports betting will funnel into the education sector.
The committee also included DraftKings and FanDuel, who footed the majority of the money. They donated $41 million to the campaign — mostly on advertising that flooded the local airwaves.
“This is a huge victory for Missouri fans and for the diverse coalition that worked together to pass Amendment 2,” Sports Betting Alliance President Jeremy Kudon. “Amendment 2 won even despite a historic $14 million spent in opposition — the most ever spent against a Missouri initiative. We are grateful to the Missouri professional sports teams who helped lead this effort and for the broad coalition that made this possible.”
Opposition Was Fierce
The last quote mentions that $14 million was spent AGAINST the bill. It’s an accurate number that came courtesy of Missourians Against the Deceptive Online Gambling Amendment.
Behind the opposition? Caesars. While they theoretically would benefit from a legalized sports betting market, they spent money against it anyway. That’s because they preferred a marketplace that didn’t include online wagering, which Amendment 2 does.
Caesars owns and operates a number of casinos throughout the state. These are already legal, and employ thousands of locals. They preferred a sports betting market that would legalize betting in their premises only. See, as other states have proven, the majority of sports bettors opt for online wagering, not in-person. That means Caesars would have to compete with the likes of DraftKings and FanDuel for betting dollars. This is the case in other states, and truthfully, Caesars hasn’t stood a chance against them. Now the same will happen in Missouri.
What’s Next?
By law inside the state, new constitutional amendments become official 30 days after the election so at best, the first legal bets could be placed as early as Dec. 5. However, that’s not windup thinking more than anything else. It’ll like take longer than that to set up shop.
The worst-case scenario for sports betting in Missouri to start? December 1, 2025. The amendment had language in it that betting must launch by that time frame.
So we won’t put a hard date on when Missouri bettors can legally wager in-state. But here are the next steps: decide which operators will get licenses in the first place. You have to believe DraftKings and FanDuel will get one each given the millions they spent to get this through the door. You scratch my back, we scratch yours, right?
The commission will also have to create regulations for betting. Things like whether college sports betting is allowed or not are questions to be asked (some states ban wagering on local collegiate teams). There’s a lot to sort out there, but regulators can lean on nearby states for advice. Sports betting in Kansas is particularly big. But in all, seven of Missouri’s eight neighbors have legal sports gambling so there are plenty of options.
Other Betting Bill Struck Down In Missouri
This went under the radar but the Show Me State actually had two betting-related things on the ballot. On top of sports betting, there was Amendment 5 which sought out to authorize a brand new casino near the Lake of the Ozarks. The amendment lost 52 percent to 48.
Ozarks gained a lot of fame thanks to the Netflix show of the same. Perhaps not coincidentally, one season of the show involves the characters starting a casino in the area to “wash” money from their drug-dealing business. Anywho, the truth was NOT stranger than fiction in this case. It was only the third time since 1980 that state voters struck down a proposal to expand betting.
Supporters of Amendment 5 sunk $10 million into the failed campaign. Money was not only spent on advertising but just getting the vote on the ballot to begin with.
It’s not clear why voters shot this one down compared to Amendment 2. However, all the negative ads against betting in general might’ve played a role. You can’t win them all, right? Amendment 5 found that out the hard way.
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