It’s been an eventful few weeks in Missouri as it pertains to legal sports betting, to say the least.
At first, sports betting was officially put on the November ballot, allowing voters to decide whether they do or do NOT want legalized sports betting in Missouri. However, a brand-new lawsuit is attempting to get betting off the ballot now. It begs the question, what the hell is going on in the Show-Me State? Let’s try to decipher all the news, starting in chronological order:
Betting Appears To Get On The Ballot
On August 13, bombshell news dropped courtesy of The Secretary of State’s Office — betting had secured enough voter signatures to become a ballet issue in early November. The initiative required at least 170,000 signatures, and the state more than doubled that with 370,000.
Officially, the ballot question would read like this:
“A ‘yes’ vote will amend the Missouri Constitution to permit licensed sports wagering regulated by the Missouri Gaming Commission and restrict sports betting to individuals physically located in the state and over the age of 21. The amendment includes a 10% wagering tax on revenues received to be appropriated for educational institutions in Missouri.”
“A ‘no’ vote will not amend the Missouri Constitution regarding licensed regulated sports wagering.”
So there you see the details — a very modest 10% tax on betting in-state. To the operator’s delight, this is a departure from the high taxes raised by Illinois in sports betting, which caused some panic that other states would follow suit. Moreover, tax money would be funneled into education and education only.
The entire signature campaign was backed by a group going by the name, Winning for Missouri Education. The campaign had heavy, heavy hitters involved. From a monetary standpoint, both DraftKings and FanDuel were backers. A report said they contributed $6.5 million together.
Moreover, the local pro sports teams — Cardinals, Chiefs, Royals, Blues, and St. Louis City SC (MLS) — joined forces on the campaign. They famously had team mascots deliver the signatures in boxes to the Missouri Secretary of State’s Office.
But at the same time, the teams supported previous efforts in-state to legalize. Those efforts went nowhere. Every piece of betting legislation in the last few years would pass the House, before being shot down in the Senate.
So what changed? Well, the group skipped the whole lawmaker process and went straight to the voters with the signature initiative. They’re capitalizing on current voter sentiment more than anything else. According to the Winning for Missouri Education, their polls said 60 percent of Missouri voters were in favor of legalizing. Now it’s fair to question the validity of the poll numbers since we know the bias of the coalition, however, the real numbers can’t be that far off of the 51 percent needed.
DraftKings Pours More Money Into Campaign
The state was buzzing after the initial ballot announcement. So much so that DraftKings chipped in an additional $3.5 million for the Winning for Missouri Education campaign. That brings their and FanDuel’s total to $10 million. Many bettors don’t realize the amount of money these operators hand to lobbyists and campaigns. For better or worse, that’s how policy is changed in America. In fact, many U.S. states legalized this way.
But hey, we’re not here to get overly political. The point is, DraftKings can easily make up that spending if betting is legalized. They are the second-biggest sportsbook out there, and would have similar success in Missouri. The money they’ve already spent could be recouped in one month, maybe two with a legal betting marketplace. However, a new lawsuit is trying to prevent this market from forming in the first place.
Lawsuit Attempts To Get Betting Off The Ballot
Everything changed on August 22 — and we mean everything.
On that day, a lawsuit was filed courtesy of Jacqueline Wood and Blake Lawrence — who are described as political consultants, whatever the hell that means. Anyway, the lawsuit claims the entire process used to certify the ballot was unconstitutional. If proven right, the issue will NOT end up in the November elections after all.
Here is the nuts and bolts of it: the initiative required signatures from 8 percent of legal voters in six of Missouri’s eight congressional districts. However, the lawsuit argues that the initiative improperly used voter data from the 2020 gubernatorial election and applied the state’s new congressional map to determine where signatures were gathered. Therefore, there were insufficient signatures in two districts.
Of course, the Winning for Missouri Education promptly filed a motion against this. The president of the Cardinals posted a statement saying, “this effort to decertify our ballot inactive is completely without merit.”
Who’s right? Who’s full of it? We aren’t going to pretend to be experts on Missouri policy so it’s not our opinion to have — we’re just simply reporting what’s happened in a two-week span.
We will be monitoring the situation ultra close, however. You’ll want to check back to our site for new updates. November is only three months away so something’s got to give — and give fast! The most competitive game in Missouri won’t be held at Arrowhead Stadium this Fall, it’ll be in the courtrooms!
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