The Kansas Sports Betting Market will Benefit from Delay of Missouri Launch

The Kansas sports betting market just received some good news. And it has nothing tangibly to do with The Sunflower State itself. 

With sports betting in Missouri now legal via Amendment 2, its impending launch stands to have a deal on Kansas, its most direct neighbor. See, ever since sports betting in Kansas went live in September 2022, the returns are benefiting from the absence of legal wagering in The Show Me State. Missourians would—and still do—cross state lines to bet on sports in Kansas. That business makes a difference.

Sure, officials are quick to note that it is impossible to put an exact figure on the impact. As Tim Carpenter of the Kansas Reflector writes, though, the state is already preparing for measurable fallout once Missouri sports betting launches:

“[Secretary of the Kansas Department of Administration Adam Proffitt] said adoption of the Missouri amendment [will] carve into cross-border betting by Missouri residents. He didn’t offer an estimate of the revenue shift. ‘I would be naive to say that it wouldn’t have any impact,’ he says. ‘We’d like to keep that money in Kansas…I live in the Kansas City metro and on some Sunday mornings, about 11:30, if I drive toward State Line (Road), there’s a host of cars literally lined up on the Kansas side — they’re on their phones placing bets on football games.’”

Losing that interstate difference will almost assuredly be felt in Kansas’ bottom line. And that impact was expected to take effect by August 2025. However, recent developments now suggest that Missouri sports betting will not launch until much later.

Missouri Delays Sports Betting Launch Unlikely Before Fall 2025

Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins recently rejected a set of emergency sports betting rules. Essentially, these proposals are designed to expedite the launch of legal wagering. Without them, The Show Me State will have to delay its launch by at least a couple of months.

This may prove problematic. Amendment 2 stipulates that Missouri sports betting launches no later than Dec. 1. Officials argue the emergency rules are integral to hitting that mark. Senator Hoskins, however, disagrees.

“The standard rulemaking process is more than capable of achieving the desired outcome within the necessary time frame,” Hoskins says (via Rudi Keller of The Missouri Independent). “In fact, under the proper procedure, the proposed rules could be effective by Sept. 30, 2025—well ahead of the December 1 deadline. This confirms that there is no legitimate justification for bypassing the standard rulemaking process, which is designed to give the public the chance to weigh in on decisions that affect them.”

Even debuting by September 30 can make a huge difference for the neighboring Kansas sports betting market. (More on this shortly.) But this assumes Hoskins is correct. He may not be. 

The Missouri Gaming Commission likely believes the emergency-rules provision is critical to meeting the Dec. 1 deadline. Indeed, it is also a means to go live by the summer. But that may potentially be a convenient offshoot. Basically, this path may significantly expedite what would otherwise be a process that spans past Dec. 1.

Delays in Missouri Could Be Huge For Kansas Sports Betting

Regardless of how long the Missouri sports betting launch is delayed, the Kansas sports betting market should materially benefit.

Let us go ahead and pencil in the Missouri debut for September 30, 2025. That still spills past the start of the NFL betting season. And it expands even longer into the college football betting season. 

This is (probably) the entire point of trying to launch sports betting in Missouri by August. The eight weeks or so that follow are some of the most lucrative for betting on NCAA and NFL football. 

If The Show Me State doesn’t launch until September 30, it will miss out on huge chunks on those popular windows. And if the debut comes even later, forget about it. Missouri could miss out on more than half of this season’s potential football betting revenue.

All the while, do you expect Missourians to sit out betting on the NFL? Of course not. They are already flocking to the Kansas sports betting market. That trend is likely to continue. This, in turn, means The Sunflower State will get to capitalize on interstate business for at least another NFL season.

Kansas Must Wait To Know Full Impact of Missouri Sports Betting Laws

This entire discussion holds little value if you do not believe Missouri customers are important to Kansas sports betting. And look, people on that side of the fence could be right. If nothing else, The Sunflower State may find that the increase of online sports betting in the United States overall offsets any interstate handle and revenue they have so far enjoyed.

Still, it will be some time before Kansas can know for sure.

If Missouri does not launch wagering until September 30, the first revenue report will not be released until November or December 2025. This timeline gets pushed even further back if the launch date does not hold. 

Yet, no matter when the first report comes, it may not necessarily matter. The Kansas Gaming Commission will need to let a bunch of Missouri sports betting revenue reports come in before drawing any profound conclusions. Heck, this is the hard-to-define issue that may require a year, if not two years, worth of data.

All of which means we shouldn’t know the full weight the water Missouri carries for Kansas sports betting until sometime in late 2026 and 2027. For now, though, it doesn’t seem like The Sunflower State will need to prepare for any market changes until after the start of the next NFL season.

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