The United States government may currently be shut down, but that is not the politics we are here to talk about. This article is going to talk about one of the biggest facets of gambling in America: sports betting. Betting on sports was previously deemed illegal as part of a 1992 federal law, stating that gambling on sports violated the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992, which forbade state authorized sports gambling. But back on May 14th of 2018, the Supreme Court in a 6-3 vote overturned the original ruling which then made way for the legalization of sports gambling. The Supreme Court vote did not legalize sports betting nationwide, rather it gave individual states the option to legalize it themselves in legislation going forward.
Missouri has not yet legalized sports betting, but discussions have been going in the senate and house in Missouri as recent as November of 2018. Missouri is already one of the more profitable states in terms of revenue from casinos. There are 13 riverboat casinos in the state of Missouri. According to a study done by the American Gaming Association, Missouri brought in $1.74 billion in gross casino gaming revenue in 2017. Along with that, Missouri brought in $445.7 million in gaming tax revenue. Both of those revenue generations were in the top 10 out of all 50 states.
Sports betting is currently legal and regulated in seven states in the USA: Nevada, New Jersey, Delaware, Mississippi, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island. New Jersey recently released their sports betting handle numbers in 2018. From June-December, the sports betting handles totaled $1.24 billion. This is just from the final seven months of the year from sports betting ALONE. To understand how this works, take a look at the November numbers from New Jersey sports betting. There was $330M in the total handle, which resulted in $21.2M in overall revenue. In New Jersey, sports betting is taxed at 8.5 percent, so in just the month of November, $2.45M was made in tax revenue for New Jersey.
Gambling on sports is one of, if not the most popular gambling trend in the country today. All major sports television networks focus on the lines and over/under of games and sports betting has become mainstream in today’s sport world. People should be allowed to throw some money on the home team if they so choose, there is no harm in it. But instead, people who are currently in Missouri have to use daily fantasy sites like DraftKings or FanDuel or secondary online betting sites that operate through different countries in order to engage in sports betting. Missouri is missing out on a literal boatload of money until they put sports betting into legislation.
Missouri is currently considering bills to legalize sports betting in the state. However, we know how fast things tend to move in Washington D.C., as it is nothing faster than a snail’s pace. But the faster Missouri politicians push to get sports betting into legislation, the faster the state of Missouri can reap the tax benefits. Gambling hotbeds like St. Louis and Kansas City can easily help bring in tens of millions in tax revenue every year from sports betting alone. Missouri could be racking in millions in tax revenue every month, which can then be flipped and used to fund public schools, infrastructure, and the like. Adding in sports betting in casinos will also create a plethora of jobs as well, another benefit of legalizing it. The government shutdown surely will not help with this process, but nonetheless, Missouri will only benefit once they legalize sports betting in casinos.
