Missouri Sports Betting Initiative: Will It Make the Ballot?
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00:00Meanwhile, deadline for Missouri, Pat and I talked about this yesterday here on the
00:07show to see if sports betting even gets on the ballot.
00:10They've had issues, Sam, over the last couple of years.
00:13In fact, Missouri was one of those states that a lot of people predicted would have
00:17sports betting by now, but they have not for various different reasons.
00:20What are the odds this gets done today?
00:22Yeah, I would, I'm pretty confident that this will get done.
00:26What's happened here is this group that went out to collect signatures to get the sports
00:31betting initiative on the ballot has already submitted them.
00:34Now they're just waiting on the secretary of state to essentially verify those signatures,
00:38make sure they're all real.
00:39There's no duplicates.
00:41It's part of the electoral process.
00:43What you should regard today as is just kind of a procedural step to make sure it goes
00:47forward.
00:48But when that announces, it's then going to get the momentum forward for the actual campaign
00:53itself to get people on board to vote for sports betting.
00:56You know, it's one thing to get it on the ballot, but then, you know, like we've seen
00:59with California, it doesn't always work out just because you raise all this money.
01:03So you've got companies like FanDuel, companies like DraftKings have raised almost $7 million
01:08just to get this done.
01:09Yeah.
01:10And I would say Missouri is probably more likely of a state to legalize this year than
01:14any other year, just because the focus is not as much on other states like California,
01:20states like Texas, states like Georgia.
01:22There's really not as many states left that are so close to legalizing sports betting,
01:26at least for a few more years.
01:28And the ones that are left, Missouri is one of the biggest ones out of those states.
01:32Like you said, people have kind of been questioning why it hasn't gotten done.
01:35There's essentially been one senator who has roadblocked a bill every time it gets passed
01:41through the House over an issue with video lottery terminals that he wants to get rid
01:45of in order for the casinos to make some more money.
01:47So it's all this political bargaining back and forth.
01:50Now that they're essentially going past the legislature and giving the power to the people
01:55to decide, it's much more likely because you don't have just this guy in the way the whole
02:00time.
02:01So I would look for later today, we'll have updates on whether or not it's going to be
02:06on the ballot.
02:07And then from then on, you go to the big race between whether or not people are going to
02:12vote for it or not.
02:13You're going to have a lot of money spent on both sides that want sports betting, sides
02:15that don't want sports betting.
02:17So Missouri should be a pretty interesting state to watch as far as the rest of the country
02:21goes this year.