Missouri’s in for another Chiefs Super Bowl without sports betting. Will it be the last?

For the fourth time in five years, the Kansas City Chiefs are headed to the Super Bowl with sports betting still illegal in Missouri.

Sports fans in the team’s home state can’t legally place bets on who wins the game, how many yards quarterback Patrick Mahomes will throw for or whether Taylor Swift can make it by game time (spoiler alert: she can).

The absence of legal betting in Missouri is especially noticeable in the Kansas City metro, where gamblers only need to cross into Kansas to place legal wagers.

Missouri lawmakers have again filed legislation this year to legalize sports wagering. But the effort is likely a longshot amid bitter infighting in the Senate and a yearslong dispute over gas station slots.

The best bet for legalization, many in the Missouri Capitol acknowledge, could be a coalition of the state’s professional sports teams pushing to put legal betting up for a statewide vote in November.

“I’m resigned to the fact that it probably will not happen this year,” House Majority Leader Jonathan Patterson, a Lee’s Summit Republican, said of sports betting’s prospects in the Missouri General Assembly.

“I think it maybe could be done legislatively next term. But, yeah, I don’t think it’s happening this year.”

But the effort from Missouri’s sports teams to place the issue on the ballot through the state’s initiative petition process is “one way to do it,” he said.

The coalition, called Winning for Missouri Education, launched a signature-gathering drive this month, hoping to get the required roughly 170,000 signatures by May in order to get sports betting on the ballot. The group, led by the St. Louis Cardinals, includes the Chiefs, Kansas City Royals, Kansas City Current and the professional hockey and soccer teams from St. Louis.

Winning for Missouri Education has reported raising $2.5 million this month, propped up by contributions from FanDuel and DraftKings, two major mobile sports betting operators.

The proposed constitutional amendment would allow each of the state’s six professional teams to have a license to receive bets on games and other outcomes. It would also allow the state’s casino operators to be eligible for a license as well as two online betting platforms.

Jack Cardetti, a spokesperson for the campaign, said the coalition’s signature-gathering efforts were “going really well,” saying voters realize Missouri is one of only about a dozen states without legalized sports betting.

“As the upcoming Super Bowl will highlight, Missourians are already placing billions annually in sports bets using illegal, offshore gaming websites or traveling across state lines and boosting our neighboring economies, while depriving our classrooms of much needed resources,” he said in a statement.

Under the measure, the state would tax sports betting at 10% with $5 million allocated to a fund intended to help prevent compulsive gambling and the remaining money, as the coalition’s name implies, would go to public schools and higher education. A fiscal note attached to the measure estimates that the state revenue generated from legalized sports betting ranges from nothing to $28.9 million each year.

Adam Sachs, the chief external affairs officers for the Royals, said in a statement that the team was happy to partner with the state’s other professional teams “in supporting this long overdue effort to further energize our respective fan bases.”

“We’ve reached the point where the voters should have a chance to weigh in if the legislative process stalls again this Spring,” Sachs said.

Missouri lawmakers have tried for years to pass a bill that would legalize sports betting, but the issue has been bogged down in the Missouri Senate by a dispute over video lottery terminals. The casino-like slot machines have proliferated across the state in recent years at gas stations, truck stops and fraternal organizations and exist in a legal gray area.

Lawmakers disagree about whether a sports betting bill should also regulate and tax the gas station slots. Senate President Pro Tem Caleb Rowden, a Columbia Republican, told reporters earlier this month that he didn’t expect the initiative petition campaign to end that dispute.

“I don’t think anything’s different this year one way or the other. I don’t know that it makes a tremendous difference in this chamber,” he said. “Both sides are pretty entrenched.”

State Rep. Dan Houx, a Warrensburg Republican and longtime supporter of legalized sports betting, has filed a bill this year that would legalize and tax sports wagering at 10%. He described the measure circulated by the state’s sports teams as “very similar” to his bill.

“Everybody has their thoughts on it,” Houx said of the likelihood of his bill passing this year. “My job is to get it out of the House. Where it goes in the Senate, I have no control over that.”

The proposed measure from Winning for Missouri Education doesn’t address the video lottery terminal issue.

In an effort to break the gridlock in the Senate, House Minority Leader Crystal Quade, a Springfield Democrat who is running for governor, said that she plans to file a compromise bill in the coming weeks that would legalize and regulate sports betting as well as the gray machines that have popped up across Missouri.

“It is a unique, different way that will probably upset a little bit of everybody,” said Quade, saying that she’s “trying to find an adult way in the room to actually address this conversation that I know folks are very frustrated by.”

Missouri lawmakers should move forward with a bill to legalize sports betting, Quade said, saying that the legislative process allows for testimony from the public, negotiations and changes. However, she said, when groups launch initiative petitions, it’s a sign that the General Assembly is not doing its job.

“It’s a testament to the stalemate that the Republicans are doing amongst themselves and refusal to actually do their jobs,” she said. “That’s why we’re seeing this move forward.”

Lawmakers who support sports betting consistently point to data that shows demand exists in the state for legalized wagering. GeoComply, a technology company that prevents bets from areas where it’s illegal, has identified more than 356,000 online betting accounts in Missouri and blocked 24.5 million attempts to place a bet in 2023.

But legalized sports betting also has detractors, including in Missouri. Polling released last year from Saint Louis University and British pollster YouGov, found that a plurality of 41% of those surveyed disagreed that betting on college and professional sports should be legal, while 35% agreed. The remaining 24% said they were not sure.

A study conducted by the Port KC Problem Gambling Fund Advisory Committee on problem gambling found that 1 in 25 adults in Missouri met the criteria for gambling disorder. The study, published in March, ran from April to August of 2022 and surveyed 3,301 Missouri adults.

The committee in a news release said Missouri lawmakers need to secure adequate funding to address the needs of Missourians with gambling disorders. Proposed legislation, the committee said, includes inadequate funding and messaging for those who need help.

“Without adequate and dedicated funding for advertising, education, prevention and treatment there will be an even greater tsunami of suffering,” the release said.

But as Houx sees it, Missouri is missing out on millions of dollars in tax revenue without legal sports gambling. And it’s not just from wagering, he said. When Missourians cross into nearby states to place their bets, they’re also buying gas and food.

“I listen to my constituents who literally call me every day going, ‘why don’t we have sports gambling?’” he said. “I’m going to continue pushing it forward.”