Football Season Is Missouri’s Chance To Get Betting On Right Track

We’re now nine months in since Missouri sports betting officially launched. Unlike just about every other legal sports betting state, things have been slow in Missouri. Awfully slow, in fact.

But the argument has always been, “wait til the NFL season starts.” It’s true, NFL betting is the driver of the vast majority of sports betting revenues.

Since Missouri didn’t launch its sports betting industry until December 2025, it missed most of the peak NFL window. The Chiefs missing the playoffs a year ago after multiple Super Bowl runs also didn’t help matters.

But still, some folks in Missouri are starting to get sour on the industry it just let in. Keep on reading, and we’ll tell you why some are just about ready to call betting a failure inside the Show-Me State.

Missouri Sports Betting Revenue Is Behind Expectations

It’s not just that Missouri betting is underperforming— it’s how bad it is. Get this, the Missouri Gaming Commission expected sports betting to generate around $25 million in tax revenue during its first full year. Nine months in, the state has collected a meager $11 million. Womp womp womp.

So we’re talking about not being halfway toward the goal. A big reason being so short, aside from launching late in the NFL season, is how the thing is being taxed.

You see, Missouri taxes sportsbook revenue at 10 percent — an awfully low amount compared to most states. Not only that, but sports betting apps can deduct promotional wagers before paying that tax. All those offers telling customers to bet $5 and receive hundreds of dollars in bonus bets can ultimately reduce the amount of revenue Missouri gets to tax. And that’s what apps have largely done for most the year trying to lure bettors into its platform.

Making this whole situation worse is that the state was banking on those tax revenues, as well get into in the next section:

Missouri’s Education Promises Aren’t Being Met

Education was at the center of the campaign to legalize sports betting in 2024. That’s where most of the tax revenue goes and supporters projected the industry would generate $105 million for education over its first five years. A smaller portion of the taxes would go toward problem gambling resources.

At least that’s was the pitch. Here again, it didn’t go as planned.

Earlier this year, around $8.6 million in sports betting taxes had been collected. The first $5 million went to the state’s compulsive gambling prevention fund, leaving only $3 million for education. Let’s call a spade a spade, that’s baby money!

You can see why some people are mad, right? Remember, the sports betting ballot barely passed in November 2024. The margin of victory was less than one percent. If you would’ve told those pro-legalization voters that the state’s education fund would barely benefit from this, do you think they’d still vote yes to legalize? Probably not.

Football Is A Final Hail Mary

The most recent official Missouri sports betting report sums up the disappointing numbers so far. Missourians wagered $246.8 million in July — down $11.5 million from June. That’s a decline of about 4.5% and marked the fourth straight month Missouri failed to reach $275 million in total wagers.

That happened despite Kansas City hosting FIFA World Cup matches during June and July. Most of the games were in June, but the knockout round — featuring the top matches — was in July. None of that was enough to give Missouri sports betting a much-needed lift.

But that was international football. American football, now that’s what Missourians are crossing their fingers on. Missouri Gaming Commission Executive Director Mike Leara, for one, believes the state can make up much of its $14 million tax revenue gap over the next few months.

That sounds ambitious when you consider Missouri has been bringing in around $2 million per month in sports betting taxes. But football can change the math in a hurry. NFL Sundays, primetime games, college football Saturdays and the endless buffet of parlays and player props give bettors a reason to open these apps every single week.

All that goes into hyperdrive if the Chiefs are competitive again. And spoiler alert: that looks to be the case after Kansas City blew out the Denver Broncos — a Super Bowl contender, most would argue — in week 1. Chiefs are the biggest sports draw in the state, and now sportsbooks get an entire season to bank off their (hopefully) success.

So yes, the numbers have been ugly. Yes, the tax revenue is way behind expectations. And yeah, the education money has been underwhelming. But… NFL betting has a funny way of righting those wrongs; just ask other states.

We’ll see what happens from now til the end of the year, but we’re also weirdly confident Missouri betting is about to make a huge comeback — just like their Chiefs will. It’s now or never for both of ‘em!