Missouri voters approved sports betting at the ballot box on November 5, 2024, through Amendment 2. More than a year later, the state’s legal market is up and running, and the Missouri Gaming Commission has moved to shut down operators that never got its blessing.
The commission opened license applications in mid-2025 and flipped the switch on legal, regulated online wagering on December 1, 2025. Missourians now have eight licensed sportsbook apps to choose from, plus a network of retail sportsbooks tucked inside casinos across the state.
As of September 2026, the commission has started sending cease-and-desist orders to prediction markets offering sports event contracts without a state license. For a market that took two years to legalize starting in 2022, the state is now moving to protect the legal framework it built by squeezing out operators working outside it.
Who Can Bet, and Where
The rules are straightforward: you have to be 21 or older, you have to have a verified sports betting account, and you have to be physically inside Missouri’s borders when you place the wager. Residency isn’t required — visitors passing through can legally bet as long as they’re standing in the state when they do it.
Betting on college sports is allowed, including games involving Missouri-based teams. There’s one carve-out: you cannot bet on player props for athletes on in-state college teams. Out-of-state college player props are fair game.
Retail sportsbooks are concentrated in casinos in St. Louis and Kansas City, but the licensed locations stretch across the state:
- Ameristar Casino Hotel Kansas City — Kansas City
- Ameristar Casino Resort Spa St. Charles — St. Charles
- Argosy Casino Hotel & Spa — Riverside
- Bally’s Kansas City — Kansas City
- Century Casino Cape Girardeau — Cape Girardeau
- Century Casino Caruthersville — Caruthersville
- Harrah’s North Kansas City — North Kansas City
- Hollywood Casino St. Louis — Maryland Heights
- Horseshoe St. Louis — St. Louis
- Isle of Capri Casino Hotel Boonville — Boonville
- Mark Twain Casino — La Grange
- River City Casino & Hotel — St. Louis
- St. Jo Frontier Casino — St. Joseph
The Promo Playbook
Licensed sportsbooks are competing for new customers with three standard promotions: Bonus Bets that hand out site credit after an initial wager, First-Bet Matches that refund a lost opening bet in promo tokens, and Deposit Matches that add to a bettor’s starting bankroll based on the size of the first deposit. None of these bonus credits can be cashed out directly, and none of them return the original stake as part of a payout — and most expire within seven days, so bettors chasing the sign-up offers need to read the fine print before they place a bet.
Missouri has no professional franchise carrying the state’s name, but it isn’t short on teams to bet on: the St. Louis Cardinals, the Kansas City Royals and Chiefs, the St. Louis Blues, and the Missouri Tigers at the college level all give bettors plenty to work with a year into legal wagering.
