A sports betting referendum will be on the ballot in November and according to a new study, Missourians are split down the middle as to whether they want mobile sports betting in the Show Me State.
Coin Flip
Winning for Missouri Education, a political action committee, will be on the campaign trail between now and November seeking to convince voters that approving sports betting will be in their best interest. One of the talking points will be educating Missouri residents about the freedom to place a bet whenever they want. However, the major driver will be focused on conveying that the taxes on top-rated sportsbooks’ revenues will go to a fund for the state’s educational system, taking the burden off the taxpayers to do so.
The PAC is the brainchild of the state’s six professional sports franchises and has seen $10 million worth of support from sports betting industry leaders FanDuel and DraftKings. There is money to be made in Missouri for all these stakeholders but the majority of voters must approve before anything can happen.
“Now that we are officially on the ballot we’ll be over the next two and a half months talking to Missourians across the state about why it makes sense to set up a legal sports betting framework that helps public education,” said campaign spokesman Jack Cardetti.
A poll conducted a few months ago by Emerson College and Nexstar Media showed only 38.3% of voters would approve mobile sports betting in the state, with 26.3% undecided. However, a more recent Saint Louis University/YouGov poll found that 50% of the respondents would approve of sports betting, while 30% were against it with the rest remaining undecided.
However, the full court press has yet to be applied in terms of advertising and media blitzes expected to be launched by Winning for Missouri Education in the runup to November’s vote.
Speed Bump
The road to the referendum is not completely paved after Missouri residents, Blake Lawrence and Jacqueline Wood, filed a lawsuit in Cole County Circuit Court challenging the certification of the signatures required to get the sports betting initiative on the ballot in November.
In August, Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft asserted that the requisite number of signatures were authentic and came from Missouri voters. A total of 340,000 signatures were collected but only 170,000 were needed to meet the state’s threshold.
The lawsuit contends that the new congressional district lines drawn in 2022 and their accompanying populations were not used when counting the certified signatures per district. It is alleged the old district lines were used and that only four of the eight districts met the required number of signatures.
St. Louis Cardinals President Bill DeWitt III said in a statement, “This effort to decertify our ballot inactive is completely without merit, as Missourians came out in force to sign the petition that will be on the ballot in November.”
