Missouri residents have no legal sportsbooks available to place bets as the 2025 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament tips off this week. That will change for the 2026 tournament.
Though Missouri voters approved legal books on the 2024 ballot, bettors can't place their first bets until fall 2025. In the meantime, Show Me State customers looking to wager with a legal sportsbook will have to bet in a neighboring state.
Why Missouri won’t have legal sportsbooks this March
After years trying to legalize sports betting through Missouri's statehouse, proponents including the state’s major professional sports teams and leading national sportsbooks, pushed for betting approval via a 2024 ballot measure. After surviving a late legal challenge and eight-figure opposition campaign, the measure passed by a few thousand votes out of nearly 3 million ballots cast.
Regulators tasked with implementing legal sports betting hoped for books to go live by summer 2025. Missouri’s Secretary of State delayed that when he denied a petition to expedite the regulatory process.
Even in a best-case scenario, it was unlikely Missouri would have books licensed before March Madness started.
The regulatory process includes promulgating key rules such as financial disclosures, licensure qualification, background checks, event wagering eligibility and a host of other decisions. Each book also needs to be tested individually.
In most of the 30 other states with legal online sports betting, the time from legal betting approval to first wager has been around six-to-nine months.
A targeted summer approval would have been one of the United States' quicker turnarounds. The current timeline projects the first books to begin in October or November of this year ahead of a legally mandated Dec. 1 go-live date.
Missouri betting options for the 2025 tournament
Missouri bettors willing to cross state lines to bet with a legal sportsbook have multiple options.
Missouri’s two largest metro areas, St. Louis and Kansas City, border Illinois and Kansas, respectively. Both states have multiple legal sports betting options and are a comparatively easy drive (or even walk) from the respective Missouri cities’ downtown cores.
Iowa, Kentucky and Tennessee don’t share major population centers but offer many of the same major online sportsbook brands. Arkansas allows statewide mobile wagering but only with three local brands associated with the state’s casinos. Nebraska only permits in-person betting while Oklahoma has no legal sportsbook betting options.
Missourians looking to bet on the 2025 March Madness may also place contracts with exchange wagering platforms such as Kalshi and Robinhood.
Future Missouri sports betting
By 2026, Missouri is set to have roughly a dozen major sportsbooks, most or all expected to be live ahead of that year’s Super Bowl and NCAA Tournament.
FanDuel and DraftKings, which combined contributed more than $30 million to the Missouri sports betting ballot measure, both announced public intentions to launch in the state. BetMGM, the nation’s No. 3 operator by handle behind the duo, also plans to go live in the state.
Caesars, which funded the opposition campaign over concerns about licensing access structure, would also be positioned to go live. Other live books in neighboring states including BetRivers, ESPN BET, bet365, Fanatics and Hard Rock could also be among the new operators.
Once live, Missouri sportsbooks will let in-state bettors place wagers on Show Me State athletic programs including the University of Missouri. This contrasts with Illinois, which prohibits bettors physically located within its borders to bet on in-state college teams.
