After years of legislative struggles, Missouri sports betting is finally coming in 2025. It won’t, however, be in the state in time for Sunday’s Super Bowl.
The Show-Me State’s Kansas City Chiefs are gunning for their third straight NFL championship. While the lack of sports betting in Missouri is undoubtedly frustrating, this will be the last round of Super Bowl betting Missourians miss out on.
An update on Missouri sports betting
Amendment 2, the Missouri sports betting ballot initiative, narrowly passed on Election Day in November. According to the legislative language, the industry must go live no later than December of 2025.
A launch prior to the Super Bowl, however, was never a reasonable ask. Industries usually need a minimum of six months to approve license applications from operators and set relevant frameworks for online sportsbooks to follow. Sunday’s Super Bowl, meanwhile, comes just three months after Amendment 2 passed by just a few thousand votes.
Missourians who want to bet on Sunday’s festivities must go to other states in order to do so. Citizens who live near borders, however, are in luck. Several neighboring states, including Kansas, Iowa, Illinois, and Kentucky, have legalized online sports betting in recent years and could see additional business from out-of-state residents coming into those areas.
So when will it go live?
The Missouri sports betting industry is most likely to open its virtual doors at some point this summer. That timing has always made sense, given the process involved and the ability to go live before the start of football seasons.
While Super Bowl betting isn’t here yet, it’s likely that citizens will be able to utilize Missouri sports betting promos when signing up for accounts before the Chiefs and the SEC’s Missouri Tigers kick off their next campaigns. Local fans should expect to be able to follow those teams (and, of course, many others) through the roads to the 2026 Super Bowl and next year’s College Football Playoff.
Such a start date would also mean Missourians could bet on the final weeks of the 2025 Major League Baseball season. The owners of the Kansas City Royals and St. Louis Cardinals were both vocal backers of Winning for Missouri Education, the group campaigning for Amendment 2’s passage. One commercial supporting the measure, in fact, featured Hall of Famer Ozzie Smith backing it from Busch Stadium.
