When sports betting in Kansas was first legalized, many doubted whether its rollout would be a home run. And, well, so much for that. Kansas sports betting may have only gone live on September 1, but it is already on pace to break, if not shatter, initial revenue projections.
This isn't some gut feeling, either. Instead, it is coming straight from the government office tasked with monitoring and implementing Kansas sports betting: the Kansas Lottery Commission.
“The very short timeline that they turned this in has been very impressive,” Chairwoman Catherine Moyer recently told FOX4 in an interview. “Kudos to them for a job very well done." Executive Director of the committee Stephen Durrell added to her assessment, as well. "I’ve been with the lottery for almost 15 years,” he told Fox4. “This is far and away the most interest in something that we’ve done, people have had.”
Officials intimately involved in the implementation and rollout of legal sports betting seldom speak so definitively about the results this early into the process. Heck, this situation is especially unique, given the complications the state faced. It wasn't long ago they were struggling to install Kansas sports betting in time for the start of the 2022 NFL season.
And yet, when Moyer and Durrell made their comments, Kansas sports betting wasn't even one week old! That is genuinely incredible. What's the root cause for their optimism? And what can we expect from Kansas sports betting in the months and years to come? Let's explore!
Kansas Sports Betting Benefits Greatly from Start of the NFL Season
Sports betting in Kansas has of course been helped along by the state meeting their deadline. They badly wanted to have casino sports betting available to residents in time for Week 1 of the 2022 NFL season, and they ended up doing just that.
Additionally, Kansas also finished setting up their infrastructure in time to do a soft opening before fully opening up the process. The first week of Kansas sports betting saw only a couple of state-operated casinos running their sportsbooks. The remaining approved casinos, meanwhile, will be opening up their sportsbooks on Day 1 of the NFL regular season: September 8, 2022.
This will be huge when it comes to maximizing revenue for Kansas. Hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars are wagered on the NFL in the United States each week. If Kansas sports betting projections were trying to account for a soft opening or delayed rollout that didn't wrap up until the middle of the 2022 football schedule, that could explain why their revenue estimates were so far off.
College football betting is also at play here. Kansas finished their pre-rollout process so quickly relative to other states that there were even a few sportsbooks open to accept wagers for the first week of the 2022 NCAA football season. That is a massive win, as well.
Is Missouri Sports Betting Also Providing a Boon for Kansas in the Early Going?
Convenient timing, along with the events gambling calendar, only tells part of the story for Kansas sports betting. The state has another, even larger factor working in their favor: The absence of legal sports betting in Missouri.
“There’s obviously a pretty big portion of Kansas’ population that lives close to the Missouri border, or frankly Missouri folks betting in Kansas especially on the Kansas City Chiefs and the Kansas City Royals,” Moyer explained to Fox4. “So, I do think that if Missouri institutes gaming, sports waging specifically, that it will impact the revenue.”
Indeed, there have been multiple reports suggesting nearly 20,000 residents from Missouri attempted to place bets from inside their state lines with one of the casino sportsbooks in Kansas sportsbooks. Mind you, this figure represents the number of bettors who were blocked from submitting their wager.
Just think of how many Missourians have traveled across state lines, to the neighboring Kansas, in order to visit one of their casino sportsbooks and place weekly or futures bets on the NFL and NCAA football. That market alone could be worth tens of millions, perhaps hundreds of millions of raw bets each year.
Kansas Sports Betting isn't Even Tapping Into Its Full Potential
Ready for the coup de grace of this whole thing? Kansas sports betting may be on pace to blow revenue projections out of the water, but it's not even coming close to flirting with its full potential.
The legalization of gambling throughout the state still doesn't include online sports betting. Sure, people from Kansas continue to engage in it. They can use one of the sites from our reviews of the top online sportsbooks, or they can journey beyond state lines to a location that has already legalized it. Regardless, though, Kansas has no way of generating revenue from any online bets that are actually placed by their residents.
Knowing the state is tracking toward rosier profits from in-person sports betting than they forecasted, it's possible Kansas' stance toward online sports betting doesn't change anytime soon. But a whole bunch of their current revenue will go out the door if Missouri ever joins the list of states to legalize sports wagering. Perhaps that's the impetus Kansas needs to change their model.
In the interim, however, they have to be feeling pretty good about their sports betting rollout. The Kansas Lottery Commission won't have exact figures for us until the fiscal quarter ends, but as it stands, they reportedly believe they'll leap-frog revenue projections by a whopping nine figures.
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