The Kansas City Chiefs reached their fourth Super Bowl in five years and bettors in their home state of Missouri hoped to take advantage, but ran into stiffer blocking than the Chiefs' offensive line.
There were more than 431,000 geolocation checks from mobile devices located in the state of Missouri attempting to access sportsbooks in neighboring states during Super Bowl weekend, according to GeoComply data. GeoComply is a company that major online sportsbook operators entrust to prevent fraud and provide cybersecurity solutions. It utilizes a bettor’s physical location, mobile device, and a blend of identity intelligence and machine learning to identify fraud and verify a user’s true identity.
Currently, Missouri does not offer legal online sports betting within its borders. Kansas City is situated on the border of Missouri and Kansas, and legal online sports betting is available in Kansas and other neighboring states.
Blocked sign-in attempts from Missouri
The appetite for legal online sports betting is growing rapidly, as GeoComply tracked more than 40,000 mobile sports betting accounts in Missouri, representing a 30% increase from Super Bowl 57. Kansas and Illinois are both legal sports betting states bordering Missouri, which is why 48% of geolocation checks on Missouri mobile devices attempted to access legal sportsbooks in Kansas, along with 37% in Illinois.
GeoComply revealed a real-time pin-drop map to display the amount of activity in Kansas City on both sides of the Kansas and Missouri border. It clearly shows a massive number of green attempts in Kansas, many of which likely traveled across the border to place legal wagers on the Chiefs ahead of their thrilling Super Bowl 58 overtime win against the San Francisco 49ers. In Missouri, there are plenty of red icons representing blocked attempts, which could’ve gone toward the state’s tax revenue instead of being allocated to Kansas’ tax revenue.
Missouri is among the latest states considering whether or not to move forward with legislation permitting legal online sports betting for bettors physically located within its state borders.
Since Kansas already has legal sports betting legislation, launching online sports betting on Sept. 1, 2022, Missouri lost significant tax revenue during Super Bowl 58. It also continues to keep bettors without regulatory protection, forcing them to wager on illegal offshore sportsbooks instead.
Bettors in other states without legal sports betting
Missouri wasn't the only state left out in the cold when it comes to legalized sports betting. More than 120,000 geolocation checks were made and blocked in Mississippi, 40% of which were attempting to access the legal sports betting market in Tennessee.
More than 70,000 attempts to access legal sportsbooks were made in Georgia, 33% of which were attempting to bet in Tennessee. More than 31,000 attempts were made and blocked in Minnesota, with 62% attempting to use Iowa's legal sportsbooks. And north of 35,000 attempts to bet in Alabama were shut down, with 53% of those bettors trying to access the Tennessee market.
Increased legal sportsbook activity
GeoComply data also shows a sizable increase in legal online sportsbook activity, as the total volume of Super Bowl bets rose more than 22% from Super Bowl 57 to Super Bowl 58. There was a total of 8.5 million active accounts in legal sports betting states during Super Bowl weekend, which is a 15% increase from 2023 to 2024.
More than 1.7 million new users registered an online sportsbook account during the two-week period between the Conference Championship games and Super Bowl 58. On the day of the Super Bowl, specifically right before the opening kickoff, GeoComply recorded 14.75 thousand transactions per second, setting another record for the most amount of transactions ever tracked, roughly doubling the number of transactions compared to Super Bowl 57.
