Missouri Sports Betting Legislation Takes a Turn For The Worse

As neighboring state Kansas continues to iron out its sports betting legislation, Missouri is, unfortunately, not seeing the same levels of success. Sports Betting legislation cleared the Missouri House of Congress fairly easily, but ran into much opposition in the senate. This led the legislation to fizzle out, and an agreement was not reached before the session ended on Friday, May 13th.

How Missouri Sports Betting Legislation Fell Apart

Everything started out just fine in Missouri–initially, Missouri stakeholders were all on the same page. House Bill 2502 was the bill to back, and it seemingly passed the house and reached the Senate with ease.

However, once it reached the Senate floor, it ran into its first opposition. Senator Denny Hoskins held up the bill, threatening to kill the legislation if it did not include video lottery terminals. A strange hill to die on, but a possible bill killer nonetheless. Senator Hoskins decided not to die on the VLT hill a bit later, but continued to push for a higher tax rate.

The initial sports betting bill would introduce a tax rate of 10%--Hoskins was as high as 21%.

At the end of the session, suddenly there were three proposals presented to the state’s professional sports team, sportsbook operators, and casinos. This conglomerate of Missouri gaming put together a deal that would create 39 mobile skins, which would be split amongst the six casino operators and six professional sports teams.

Ultimately a deal could not be reached, and no sports betting bill was signed.

What is next for Missouri Online Sports Betting?

Before last week's debacle, it was expected that both Missouri and Kansas would sign their sports betting legislation. While Kansas was successful, Missouri was not–thus pushing their sports betting hopes to next year's session.

Sports bettors in Missouri will be heartbroken at the news–but should keep their hopes up, considering how close they got to the finish line this time around. And hey, worst comes to worst you just hope the state border over into Kansas and you bet there.