It is now legal to place sports bets in the state of Missouri.
At midnight local time on Monday, Missouri officially began taking legal sports bets, becoming the 39th state to offer regulated sports betting in some form and the 31st to take wagers via the internet and mobile apps; Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico also accept wagers in both the retail and online formats.
Missouri is the first state to go live since North Carolina in March 2024.
The Show Me State is unique in the sports betting landscape in that its two major metropolitan areas -- Kansas City and St. Louis -- are on the borders of two other states that have had legal sports betting for some time (Kansas and Illinois, respectively). Overall, Missouri shares a border with seven sports-betting-legal states.
"I always find that the states that have the border states are so happy to have it for themselves because the patrons have been going to Kansas, Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky or Tennessee to make wagers," DraftKings Sportsbook director Johnny Avello told ESPN (Arkansas and Nebraska are the other two bordering states). "Now, they can just stay at home and enjoy what those other states have been doing."
A Missouri ballot initiative narrowly passed by less than 3,000 votes in November 2024, paving the way for sports betting as a regulated industry just over a year later. The resulting state constitutional amendment directs the Missouri Gaming Commission to impose a 10% tax to cover expenses for the commission, as well as support responsible gaming initiatives and general education in the state.
The amendment allows for 19 retail licenses and 14 mobile licenses, though as of the initial go-live, only eight retail licenses and eight mobile licenses have been approved. The mobile licenses belong to BetMGM, Caesars Sportsbook, Circa Sports, DraftKings, Fanatics Sportsbook, theScoreBet and bet365.
As with the opening of any new sports betting market, these major sportsbooks will look to deluge the market with promotional offers and advertising; with Missouri being the first state to go online in almost two years, the books are able to commit more time and resources to this particular launch.
"When you're launching five to 10 states in a given year, your ability to do precise segmentation, player promotional design, et cetera, is a lot more limited just from a bandwidth perspective than what we can do now," BetMGM chief revenue officer Matt Prevost told ESPN, also noting that the company's main celebrity endorser, Jon Hamm, is from Missouri.
Caesars and DraftKings are hosting ceremonial first bet events for the occasion, with the latter bringing in Missouri sports legends Tony Gonzalez, Isaac Bruce and Brett Hull to do the honors.