Missouri Sports Betting Officially will NOT Launch Before Football Season

Well, it is official: You should not expect Missouri sports betting to launch in time for the 2025 college football and NFL seasons.

Ever since the narrow passage of Amendment 2 legalized sports betting in Missouri, the preferred timeline has remained on life support. The Missouri Gaming Commission almost immediately applied for emergency rules consideration. Among other things, this can accelerate the sportsbook licensing application process, which historically takes time. The overarching goal of this application: ensuring Missourians could bet on the NFL and bet on NCAA football by the time their regular seasons kicked off.

However, Secretary of State Denny Hoskins swiftly rejected this proposal. “We cannot afford to rush through this process for the sake of a deadline that can easily be met through standard procedures,” he said at the time, per NBC 8 in Columbia.

The deadline to which Hoskins refers is December 1, 2025. That is when Missouri sports betting must launch by, according to the terms of Amendment 2. While Hoskins clearly believes the Missouri Gaming Commission will have no issue meeting that deadline without special consideration, others are not so sure.

Can Missouri Sports Betting be Set Up by the December Deadline?

Skeptics of Hoskins’ ruling point toward the length screening process required to issue licenses for online sports betting in the United States. Here is more on that matter from Riley Trapp of NBC 8:

“The application process itself is the longest part of getting sports gambling up and running…Applications for both individual retail licenses as well as large corporate untethered licenses for gambling moguls like FanDuel and Caesars, include an extensive background check. ‘The application is long, and we require a lot of information from individuals who are applying for licenses,’ says Missouri Gaming Commission Chair Jan Zimmerman. ‘In a perfect world we get all the right information the first time, never happens.’ 

“Another factor adding to the application process is the law that every person working in an in-person sportsbook must have their own individual retail license from the Missouri Gaming Commission. Professional sports teams like the Kansas City Chiefs and St. Louis Cardinals will be allowed to obtain retail licenses to operate in-person sportsbooks at their sports districts. ‘Because the rules won't go into effect until August the 30th, what that means is we won't even be able to start accepting applications until that date,’ Zimmerman said.”

The August 30th start date for applications is the real headline here. Officials initially wanted Missouri sports betting up and running by the start of August. Now, they will not even be able to start screening Missouri online sportsbooks until essentially the start of September.

Forget About the Start of Football Season, will Sports Betting in Missouri even Go Live Before It Ends?!

This new timeline creates obvious challenges for betting on football in Missouri this coming season. The 2025 NCAA football regular season will begin in August. Week 1 of the 2025 NFL season kicks off on September 5. By that point, the Missouri Gaming Commission will have only just begun the sportsbook application process.

So, yeah, there’s no need to wonder whether Missourians can wager on football at the outset of the season. They can’t. And just in case you are holding out hope anyway, Zimmerman confirms as much. “The background investigation is pretty extensive,” she tells NBC 8. “The fact that preseason in the NFL will have already started, we won't be able to start this by the time football season starts.”

What about the rest of the football season, though? Will Missouri sports betting go live before it ends?

To some extent, the answer has to be “yes.” The December 1 deadline demands it. Both college football and the NFL will still be playing games by then.

At the same time, their entire regular seasons will pretty much be over. College football championship season begins sometime in December. The start of the NFL playoffs also coincides with the end of December.

So while it seems Missourians will have the ability to bet on playoff football, they may not be able to place wagers until the very end of the regular season.

Impact of Delayed Sports Betting Launch in Missouri Could be Substantial

Our natural inclination is to wonder whether more Missouri sports betting delays may be on the horizon. For now, we default to “no.” The December 1 deadline seems to be a hard one. We should assume The Show Me State launches sports wagering by then until proven otherwise.

With that said, the Missouri Gaming Commission will almost assuredly need to revise its opening revenue forecasts.

The relative newness of online sports betting in Missouri ensures there isn’t necessarily a bad time to launch. It also appears the state will be able to capitalize on NFL playoffs betting. That is a major tent-pole wagering period.

Nevertheless, the absence of sports betting for most of the regular season will no doubt eat into Year 1 volume. In essence, there would be waaay more accounts created and wagers placed if Missouri sports betting was available for both the NFL regular season and playoffs.

Of course, the delay also means The Show Me State’s first-year calendar gets pushed back. Their one-year anniversary will be December 2026 rather than, say, August 2026. They may be able to make up their initial projections on the back end.

But this is not a given. If nothing else, Super Bowl betting in Missouri could lag because people aren’t familiar enough with the state’s operations. It would be easier to build up a steady client base throughout the regular season that’s guaranteed to be active during the playoffs. We will have to monitor and see whether there’s any fallout from the now-deferred rollout.

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