Super Bowl betting paradox: If the Chiefs win, Kansas loses | Opinion

Kansas may be the beating heart of Chiefs Kingdom, but if Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift have a good day this Super Bowl Sunday, the state will come out on the losing end of sports betting.

That little bit of weirdness is brought to you by the Kansas Constitution and the state Legislature.

In most states that allow sports betting, casinos and their sportsbooks are owned by the private sector and the state simply taxes them.

In Kansas, well, it’s complicated.

Technically, the state government owns and operates the casinos that contract with the sportsbooks and state coffers get a share of the profit — so when the house wins, we win with them.

Conversely, when the house loses, we do too.

And when it’s the Kansas City Chiefs in the Super Bowl — the most popular betting event of the year — there’s a high risk that the state will take a bad beat. Like last year, when the Chiefs edged the Philadelphia Eagles 38-35 to take the NFL championship.

According to the gambling trade journal legalsportsreport.com, Kansans bet $25 million on the Super Bowl last year. A whopping 80% of that was on just two bets: the Chiefs to win and that Mahomes would be named the game’s most valuable player.

Both of those wagers were winners and the state took a bath. Kansas bettors won $39 million total, leaving the casinos holding the bag for $14 million.

In a perfect world, equal amounts are bet on both teams and the sportsbooks can use the losers’ money to pay off the winners. That balance is encouraged by adjusting payouts and/or using a “point spread,” which is a number of points that one team has to win by for bets on them to pay off.

When the bets even out, the sportsbook makes a tidy profit on what’s called “vigorish,” or “the vig.” That’s money the house holds back for itself for handling the bets.

But when way more is bet on one team than the other, it skews the system and the house can either win big or lose big.

So how big a hit did Kansas take on last year’s Super Bowl?

For the 11 months of 2023 excluding the Super Bowl month of February, the four Kansas casinos’ sports revenue averaged out to about $9.1 million a month, and the state’s cut averaged $910,000.

Then there was February. Three of the state’s four casinos reported zero in sports betting revenue for the month.

Only the Kansas Star was in the black, and that just barely — a paltry $11,342 in revenue, with only $1,134 for the state.

So, you may be asking why every man, woman and child in Kansas is essentially a bookie in partnership with casinos.

The answer lies in the Kansas Constitution.

In 1986, Kansas voters passed a constitutional amendment to authorize the creation of a state lottery. For many years, that was pretty much limited to scratch-off tickets, Lotto/Powerball games and Keno boards in bars and gas stations.

But over time, the amendment has been interpreted to allow gambling activity far beyond the lottery’s humble origins.

In 2007, the Legislature passed and Gov. Kathleen Sebelius signed what was called the “Expanded Lottery Act.”

That authorized four destination casinos to be built around the state: the Kansas Star in Mulvane, the Hollywood in Kansas City, the Boot Hill in Dodge City and the Kansas Crossing in Pittsburg.

To comply with the Constitution, all are legally considered “owned and operated” by the state — although the state stretched the legal definition of “owned and operated” to accommodate private businesses running the games and sharing the profit with the state.

In 2022, the Legislature and Gov. Laura Kelly expanded the Lottery again, allowing the four casinos to partner with national sportsbooks — including DraftKings, FanDuel, BetMGM, ESPNbet, PointsBet and Caesars — to offer sports wagering inside the casinos and through online apps.

So what can we as Kansans do to reduce our risk this Super Bowl Sunday?

Well, theoretically, half of us could go bet on the 49ers to kind of even things out.

Or, we could root for the 49ers to cover the two-point spread, which would mean a windfall for the public till.

Naw. I’m a transplanted Californian, and even I can’t go there.

Go Chiefs.