Six months after Missouri opened legal online sports betting, the state’s eight online operators have accepted more than $1.5 billion in wagers and produced roughly $3.6 million to $4 million in state tax revenue. House Bill 3533, the legislative attempt to close the gap by raising rates and capping promotional deductions, stalled in committee during the 2026 session and is not expected to return before next year.
Missouri became the 32nd U.S. state with statewide online sports betting on Dec. 1, 2025, following voter approval of Amendment 2 in November 2024. The Missouri Gaming Commission licensed eight online operators ahead of the launch: bet365, BetMGM, Caesars, Circa, DraftKings, Fanatics, FanDuel, and theScore Bet, alongside 13 retail sportsbook locations. Amendment 2 set the state tax rate at 10 percent of adjusted gross receipts, defined as total wagers accepted minus payouts and certain allowable deductions, with revenue earmarked primarily for state education programs.
The mechanism behind the small tax take is the deduction Amendment 2 grants operators for promotional spending. Bonus bets, deposit matches, no-sweat tokens, and other customer acquisition incentives are subtracted from gross revenue before the 10 percent tax applies, with no statutory cap on the size of that deduction during a given month. In December 2025, the eight operators accepted $543 million in handle, reported gross gaming revenue of approximately $103 million, and offered an estimated $125 million in promotional credits and bonus bets to acquire customers. The result: state tax revenue of $521,000 for the launch month against a market the size of New Jersey’s mid-tier months.
January 2026 produced more typical post-launch numbers. Handle fell roughly 29 percent to $384 million as the introductory promo wave receded, but adjusted revenue climbed to $53.3 million as operators trimmed bonus offerings. February 2026 handle dropped further to $277 million. By the end of March 2026, cumulative state tax revenue across the program’s first four months sat at roughly $3.6 million to $4 million, a figure that represents approximately 0.25 percent of cumulative handle.
The structural reason operators have been so aggressive on promotional spending in Missouri is that every dollar of bonus credit issued during a given month reduces the operator’s tax bill that month. Operators in higher-tax states such as New York (51 percent) and Pennsylvania (36 percent) cannot achieve the same arbitrage. In Missouri’s first three months, operators discovered they could effectively maintain near-zero tax liability while still posting strong handle by keeping promotional spend roughly equal to gross gaming revenue. December 2025 was the clearest example of that strategy.
Rep. Jeff Knight introduced HB 3533 on Feb. 27, 2026 in direct response to the revenue gap. The bill would have layered an additional 24 percent tax on adjusted gross receipts on top of the existing 10 percent rate and would have capped the share of revenue operators could deduct for promotional spending each month. Knight, a Republican from the southwest corner of the state, argued that the existing structure had given operators terms more favorable than those negotiated by neighboring Kansas and Illinois and that the state was not on track to receive the education funding Amendment 2 promised voters.
The bill was read twice on the Missouri House floor but never received a committee assignment for full hearing. By late April 2026, with the legislative session winding down, lawmakers indicated they wanted additional months of operator performance data before revisiting the structure. The Senate showed no companion measure. HB 3533 died with the session.
Missouri legislators did approve a separate gambling-revenue change targeting the state’s land-based casinos. The casino admission fee, frozen at $2 since 1994, was raised to $5.50 and restructured to apply every two hours a patron remains in the gaming area rather than as a single-entry fee. The amount will adjust annually for inflation. The change is expected to generate recurring revenue starting in the next fiscal year. The state chose the admission fee restructuring over a percentage-rate increase on either casino gaming or sports betting revenue.
The eight Missouri sportsbooks have shown different acquisition patterns since launch. DraftKings and FanDuel both held heavy promotional spend through the NFL playoffs and Super Bowl in January and February. BetMGM and Caesars followed similar patterns at smaller scale. bet365 launched in Missouri through a partnership with the St. Louis Cardinals and used that team affiliation as a marketing anchor. theScore Bet (PENN Entertainment’s rebranded US product after the ESPN BET partnership ended) launched in Missouri on Dec. 1 as its first market under the new brand. Circa pursued a strategy oriented toward larger-handle bettors rather than mass promotional acquisition; CEO Derek Stevens told reporters in March 2026 that Circa’s Missouri growth had been strong despite the company trailing major competitors in raw handle.
The gap between Missouri’s strong volume metrics and weak tax yield is now a case study other states are watching. Kansas and Illinois both posted year-over-year handle declines in early 2026, with Kansas seeing the steepest drops as Missouri’s launch absorbed cross-border activity. Texas, California, Georgia, and Minnesota, the four largest U.S. states without legal sports betting, are watching the Missouri promo deduction structure as a cautionary example for their own legislative drafts. A future tax-rate fix in Missouri remains possible in the 2027 session, but operators have at least 12 more months of the current structure to work with. For Missouri bettors, that translates into a sustained period of aggressive promotional offers from legal online sportsbooks operating in the state.
