37 states rushed to join Nevada in allowing full-scale legal sports betting from 2018 through 2024, following a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling, but Missouri wasn’t one of them. In fact, the Show Me State only just joined the sports betting club in 2025, with a December 1 launch date.
Only a handful of states have a lower tax rate than Missouri’s 10%, and coupled with the state’s mid-sized population, every sportsbook operator has at least looked into doing business in the state.
State regulators brushed off efforts to impose emergency regulations designed to speed up the approval process, preferring a deliberate pace to try to ensure that the finished product will be fully successful.
On Oct. 22, the Missouri Gaming Commission announced that in addition to the untethered license previously awarded to DraftKings and Circa Sports, seven others also were approved: Bet365, BetMGM, Caesars, Fanatics, FanDuel, ESPN Bet, and Underdog.
| Live Since: | Dec. 1, 2025 |
|---|---|
| Total Online Books: | 9 |
| Total Retail Books: | 8 of the state’s 13 casinos have published plans to open sportsbooks, and several more are expected to be announced. |
| Handle & Revenue: | DraftKings and FanDuel lobbyists in August 2025 agreed that state sportsbooks could take in $575 million annually at “market maturity” after a number of years. That would send $57.5 million to the state in tax revenue. |
| Sports Betting Tax Rate: | 10% |
| Legal Betting Age: | 21+ |
Most of the biggest names in the U.S. sportsbook industry will launch on December 1, 2025, including FanDuel, DraftKings, Caesars, BetMGM, theScore Bet, and Fanatics. That means Missouri residents will have plenty of opportunity to sign up for multiple bonuses and other incentives.
There’s a variety of betting promotions being offered to Missourian bettors. FanDuel offers those who win their initial $5 bet $200 in bonus bets. Hard Rock’s version offers $150 in free bets.
Bet365’s promotion may be more appealing to many – the $200 in free bets is achieved regardless of whether the bet wins or loses.
At launch date, there are nine online sportsbooks and roughly eight retail sportsbooks live in Missouri.
For the most part, Missouri-based gamblers will have the same broad menu of sports betting available in dozens of other states. These include major sports franchises such as:
The state’s major professional sports teams are based in Kansas City and St. Louis. The former include the NFL’s Chiefs and the Royals of MLB, while St. Louis features the Cardinals of MLB and the NHL’s Blues.
There is only one Division I college football team in the state – the University of Missouri Tigers. The same school has a D-1 college basketball team, and the others are Missouri State, St. Louis, Kansas City, Southwest Missouri, and Lindenwood. Missouri has just a 1-7 all-time record in the annual “March Madness” men’s college basketball tournament, and the school’s football team is not typically a serious national championship contender in football.
Missouri law doesn’t allow for prop betting on individual collegiate athletes playing for Missouri universities. This matches similar bans in neighboring Illinois, Arkansas, and Iowa.
But Kansas City residents have a workaround, as nearby Kansas allows betting on any college athlete props. St. Louis residents, meanwhile, can cross into Illinois to bet on Missouri college athlete prop bets – but not on Illinois counterparts.
On March 9, 2020, the same week that the COVID-19 pandemic led to shutdowns of most businesses, including casinos, Illinois authorized its first bets at Rivers Casino. The first mobile sports bets were then placed in June 2020.
Missouri will never rival the Illinois numbers – not even at full maturity in five or six years. Why is that? Well, Illinois is the sixth-most populated state in the U.S. with nearly 13 million residents. In comparison, Missouri is 19th with just under half of that number of residents.
A more realistic “rivalry” would be with neighbors Kansas and Iowa, each with just over 3 million residents. After just a couple of years, Missouri should top those states in annual gross gaming revenue.
That’s particularly true of Kansas, which from Sept. 2022 until Dec. 2025 benefited from bonus tax revenue derived from losing bets by Kansas City residents who crossed the state line.
That said, Illinois will take a hit from St. Louis-area gamblers no longer crossing into that state who are looking to make wagers and avoid its sports betting tax rate of as much as 40%.
The long delay in Missouri adding legal sports betting in the state was not for lack of trying.
The final tally of votes in Missouri regarding sports betting had 1.478 million votes in support, and 1.474 votes in opposition – a winning margin of just under 3,000 votes out of nearly 3 million votes cast.
The process of setting rules and regulations for the new form of legal gambling began in December 2024, and the Dec. 1, 2025 launch date was the latest permitted under state law.
The first legal bets on the wildly popular Kansas City Chiefs will be made for the Dec. 7 contest against the Houston Texans – their 13th game in their 17-game season. The Missouri Tigers football regular-season schedule ends on Nov. 29, so those fans will only be able to make bets on the team’s season-ending bowl game or playoff games. The St. Louis Blues hockey team began play in October.
The state’s lawmakers did their gambling-minded residents no favors, as the Chiefs won AFC championships in five of the six seasons from 2019-2024, with Super Bowl titles coming in February of 2020, 2023, and 2024. As by far the most popular team in the state, the franchise’s extensive success would have proved lucrative for Chiefs fans who could have legally wagered on the Chiefs week after week.
Sportsbook operators, on the other hand, dodged a bullet while state budget officials would have taken in lower-than-expected tax revenue because of the low profit levels of those sportsbooks who would have had to keep laying out money to its gamblers for winning bets.
| Total Handle: | Possibly $250 million or more in December 2025 |
|---|---|
| Tax Revenue: | If sportsbooks generate a “hold” of 10% that month, then the state’s share would be $2.5 million in December 2025 tax revenue. |
| Breakdown of Online vs. Retail Share | It is likely that Missouri’s breakdown will be similar to most states, with online wagering achieving about 95% of the total. |
| YoY Growth Rates: | Past performances in other states likely would mean double-digit gains from 2026 to 2027. |
| Handle Milestones: | The state might be able to take in as much as $2.5 billion in the first 12 months of sportsbook activity. |
Missouri is 19th in the U.S. in population, with Indiana and Maryland also having between 6 and 7 million residents. Maryland took in just over $200 million in betting handle in its first month with mobile sports betting in 2022 – also during football season. The presence of the mighty Kansas City Chiefs and the pent-up demand for legal gambling in Missouri bodes well for state sportsbooks.
There are currently only three established partnerships between Missouri state sports teams and confirmed sportsbooks:
A relatively late sports betting launch by a state like Missouri has its pros and cons. The loss of millions in annual tax revenue is countered by an opportunity to observe launches in dozens of other states, and also contacting their regulatory peers in those states to learn what decisions proved beneficial as well as any rules that, in retrospect, could have been made more effectively.
This includes ensuring full compliance by sportsbook operators and choices made about how to handle the amount of advertising that those books inevitably rolled out in an effort to gain maximum market share as quickly as possible.
The commission’s decision not to pass emergency regulations that might have made betting available by the start of the fall football seasons reflect its prioritizing of making sure all proper rules are in place over a rush to launch the gambling.
Missouri has featured a “List of Disassociated Persons,” also referred to as a “Problem Gambling List” since 1996. It is a voluntary self-exclusion option that is part of a compulsive gambler’s program to solve their issues.
Meanwhile, state regulators also have an “Exclusion List” that contains the names of those convicted of gambling-related crimes whether in Missouri or elsewhere in the U.S.
Missouri’s problem gambling help line – 1-800-GAMBLER – is available 24 hours a day. It is a free service that will help callers find a certified compulsive gambling counselor in their area.
Another helpful source can be found at the Missouri Gaming Commission’s main website: https://www.mgc.dps.mo.gov/dap/dap_faq.html.
There are few sports franchises in the country that dominate their state’s sports focus as much as the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs do. With only three other major sports teams and only one major college football or basketball team, the Chiefs will attract the lion’s share of wagers by fans of the state’s teams.
It took multi-year determination – and tens of millions spent on advertising – to finally push sports betting legalization over the finish line. Short-term tax revenue results will be significantly impacted by whether the Chiefs qualify for the NFL playoffs, and if so how far they advance toward their goal of yet another Super Bowl appearance.
Missouri legalized sports betting in 2024, and the first apps and retail sportsbooks are expected to launch on December 1, 2025.
You’ll need to be 21 or older to place a sports bet in Missouri, whether online or in person.
You’ll be able to bet on professional and college sports, including local favorites like the Kansas City Chiefs, St. Louis Cardinals, and Missouri Tigers.
Yes. You must be physically located within Missouri to place a legal sports wager. Geolocation technology will verify this.
Expect major welcome bonuses from top operators like FanDuel and Caesars when it launches. These will include bonus bets and pre-launch signup offers.
