BetRivers Eager to Enter Missouri Sports Betting Market

Rush Street Interactive’s parent company, BetRivers, stated on Monday that it is excited to enter the Show Me State’s sports betting market when it launches in 2025. The company executives also expressed optimism that gaming could expand to include online casino gambling at some future date.

BetRivers Rushing to Missouri

During a webinar on Monday, BetRivers and Rush Street Interactive executives expressed their enthusiasm for the recently passed legislation that will see Missouri become the 31st state in the nation to launch mobile sports betting. The law stipulates that sports betting must be launched by December 1, 2025, but mobile sportsbooks will likely be going live before September in preparation for the industry’s most lucrative sport, the NFL, and college football seasons.

Rush Street CEO Richard Schwartz said, “It’s a large population and one that we think is an attractive market as well for other reasons; we were glad it passed.”

Bringing Back Business From Other States

Rush Street Interactive has a presence in 15 states, including two of Missouri’s neighboring states, Illinois and Iowa. Those handles are likely to be adversely impacted once Missouri launches their mobile sports betting industry, as Missourians will no longer have to cross state lines to make a bet.

Although Missouri is expected to become fertile soil for mobile sportsbooks, the opportunity for online casino gambling, or iGaming, is also a carrot that is dangling. Sports betting revenue pales in comparison to digital casino gambling, but thus far, only seven states have adopted it, including New Jersey, Delaware, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Connecticut, and Rhode Island.

Yet, the vote was hotly contested, and Amendment 2, the referendum on Missouri’s November ballot to allow sports betting, narrowly passed by only a few thousand votes of the approximately 3 million that were cast. Therefore, it is unlikely iGaming will be embraced anytime soon, but the possibility looms as Missourians become more accustomed to betting on sports through their PCs and mobile devices.

“I thought perhaps it would have been a little bit of a wider margin,” Schwartz said. “But it’s good for the industry that it did pass.”

Market Access

The six professional sports teams in Missouri were proactive in bringing sports betting to the masses through a coalition called Winning for Missouri Education. The political action committee was funded by the teams but also saw more than $40 million donated by industry titans FanDuel and DraftKings.

The professional teams will each be allowed one skin, or mobile sports betting partner, through which they will get a cut of the profits. The casino operators in the state will also each get one skin, regardless of how many casinos they operate in Missouri, much to the chagrin of Caesars Entertainment, which operates three casinos and opposed Amendment 2 primarily for that reason.

There will also be two untethered licenses, which is the optimum market access, as the mobile sports betting operators will not have to share in the profits. It is almost certain those will be awarded to FanDuel and DraftKings because of their considerable financial support in bringing mobile sports betting to the Show Me State.