Odds for more sports betting expansion could fade after rapid growth to 38 states
Sports betting has spread rapidly across U.S. states in the past five years
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — At his suburban St. Louis home, Brett Koenig can pull out his smartphone and open a sports betting app. But he can't place a bet. He is blocked by a pop-up message noting he is not in a legal location.
Missouri is one of a dozen states where sports wagering remains illegal more than five years after the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for states to adopt it.
“It just seems silly that everyone else can do it and we can’t,” said Koenig, who has launched a social media campaign called «Let MO Play» to rally support for legal sports betting in his home state.
Other states have reaped a total of over $4 billion of taxes from more than $280 billion wagered on sports since 2018. Vermont will become the latest to accept sports bets, starting Jan. 11, But the odds for expansion to additional states appear iffy in 2024 because of political resistance and the sometimes competing financial interests of existing gambling operators.
“The handful of states yet to legalize are last for a reason: They all have multiple obstacles," said Becca Giden, policy director at Eilers & Krejcik Gaming, a California-based consulting firm.
After a “whirlwind” of expansion, the playing field for further sports betting has narrowed to a group of states where various stakeholders all “want to kind of maximize what they get out of the legalization framework," said Chris Cylke, senior vice president of government relations at the American Gaming Association, which represents the industry. «So that can create some friction.”
The states where sports betting remains illegal are Alabama, Alaska, California, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Minnesota, Missouri,
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