Missouri Sports Betting Launch Shattering Projections

Missouri sports betting is officially up and running, and people are wasting little time in capitalizing on its launch.

According to recent data, sportsbooks in The Show Me State registered over 500,000 new users during the first week of operations. That is not all, either.

The sheer volume of people who have inquired about sports betting in Missouri is through the roof. As Eric Ramsey writes for Legal Sports Report:

“Geolocation supplier GeoComply has processed more than 18.5 million location checks in Missouri since the launch of legal sports betting there one week ago. Those checks came from more than 520,000 sports betting accounts across the state, per a release from the company. GeoComply previously reported more than 250,000 active accounts on launch day alone. ‘Missouri has waited a long time for legal sports betting, and the early response has been extraordinary,’ said GeoComply CEO Kip Levin in a statement to LSR.”

These sentiments from Levin may be understatement. Few were predicting that there would be 500,000 active Missouri sports betting accounts so soon.

As for what’s the primary catalyst behind the outperforming level of interest? It may be the calendar.

Timing is Everything for Missouri Sports Betting

In the grand scheme of things, Missouri is late to the sports betting party. At the time of launch, 38 other states, as well as Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico, already offered some form of legal sports betting in the USA.

When it comes to the sports calendar, however, The Show Me State may have timed things just right.

Sure, plenty of officials preferred to have Missouri sports betting go live in time for the start of the 2025 NFL season. That became a non-option due to various processes, including the rejection of an emergency application that would have allowed the Missouri Gaming Commission to expedite the timeline. Yet, while this may not have been ideal, the state’s fallback timeline, as it turns out, is pretty darn good.

Right now, betting on every aspect of the NFL is reaching a fever pitch. From wagering on regular-season games and playoff berths to making future bets on the Super Bowl and even conference championships, football gambling is a scorching-hot property.

This does not just refer to betting on the NFL. The betting for college football is quickly crescendoing now that the NCAA football playoff bracket is officially set. Even though none of The Show Me State’s own schools made the cut, Missouri is a football-at-large state. College, professional, high school—it doesn’t matter. Interest at every level is incredibly high.

Early Missouri Betting Data Proves the Value of Launch Date

The initial Missouri sports betting data echoes the above sentiments.

Exact gambling handles are, of course, impossible to come by so early into the game. These figures usually come out a month or two after the fact. With that said, Alan Slope of KMBC 9 News spoke with BetMGM spokesman John Ewing, who provided a peak behind the betting-action curtain. From Slope’s piece:

“‘Bettors love all the options,’ BetMGM spokesperson John Ewing said. He said app signups and activations have ‘skyrocketed’ in the first week, especially when the Kansas City Chiefs are playing. ‘Geo-locate where you're at in the state — when the Chiefs were playing, Missouri had the most pings of players trying to get to a legal state,’ Ewing said…But with so many sports available, [sports fan Gavin] McHuge said the challenge is choosing what to wager on. ‘The problem is there’s so many different things to bet on and that’s the beauty of it.’ Ewing said Chiefs fans continue to place their faith, and money, on a championship run. ‘The Chiefs to win the Super Bowl and win the AFC have seen the most bets since we've gone live in Missouri on Monday,’ he said.”

This may seem like a “Well, duh” development. Remember, though, Missouri sports betting isn’t yet two weeks old as of this writing. Generating the “most pings” of any state on the Chiefs this early into the game is pretty absurd.

Will Missouri Look to Adjust Sports Betting Revenue Expectations?

Given the initial popularity of Missouri sports betting, it may be time for experts to recalibrate their first-year projections.

Writing for AI Invest a couple of months back, Cyrus Cole noted that Missouri sports betting is expected to generate $3.4 billion in total bets during its first year. We do not yet have a reference for how the state is faring against that volume. But the massive surge of new account sign-ups and overall geo-location checks has already exceeded expectations in that arena. It stands to reason the overall Missouri sports betting handle will follow suit.

We will have a better idea of where it stands sometime in January or February 2026. That is right around when the first Missouri sports betting revenue and handle reports should come out. From there, we will be able to extrapolate how much money will be spent on wagers through November 2026.

Until then, we have only loose data and anecdotal evidence to go off. And if either is any indication of what to expect, Missouri sports betting has the chance to be way more popular than perhaps anyone could have foreseen.

Take a look at this list of the top online sportsbooks so you can find one that works for all of your sports betting needs: