Missouri's Ongoing Battle for Legal Sports Betting

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00:00All right, Pat, well, I read your column over at Legal Sports Report last week.

00:06What is going on here in Missouri?

00:07I mean, this is like, it feels like we get closer, we get further away from them legalizing

00:12sports betting here.

00:13But, and we know that there are some people that do not want sports betting there, but

00:17it does feel like the push continues.

00:19But there is a lawsuit that is currently in the way of some of this.

00:23Tell us more about it.

00:24I don't want to ruin the story before.

00:25Yeah, of course.

00:26I mean, to set the tone of it, I mean, we have to remember that the last three years

00:30there's been legislative pushes to get sports betting over the, you know, finish line and

00:35legalized in Missouri.

00:36And it just hasn't happened, largely because of one senator, Denny Hoskins, who's wanted

00:41to tie video lottery terminals to the legislation and nobody else wanted to do that.

00:46So that it fell short.

00:47Well, Bill DeWitt, the third from the St. Louis Cardinals, was like, we got to do it

00:51a different way.

00:52And he started with all the other professional sports teams in the state, a giant ballot

00:56petition to get it on the ballot less than two months away.

01:00Well, here we are two months away again, and as I just said, and we're, we've got a lawsuit

01:05challenging the certification process of that ballot petition.

01:10And it's kind of a mystery of who's behind this.

01:13We know there's two Democratic consultants who are the plaintiffs in this case, but they're

01:19backed and led by a Republican attorney.

01:23He's the chair of the Republican Lawyers Association, National Lawyers Association.

01:29So that's a strange bedfellows.

01:32He's done a lot with the Missouri Gaming Association, which represents the casinos in the state,

01:37which has been kind of quiet in terms of this whole ballot petition.

01:41And now this lawsuit, it has not issued a statement around either of them.

01:46And so this, this is just a kind of a big question of who's actually behind this, because

01:51there's some kind of interesting bedfellows here.

01:54The hearing is tomorrow, the first hearing, at least.

01:57Maybe there could be more, or it could be settled tomorrow, we'll find out.

02:02And we'll go from there.

02:03I mean, there has been industry talk before the lawsuit, you know, multiple sources had

02:08told me that Caesars and Penn Entertainment weren't very happy with how the ballot language

02:14was set up, because rather than how it was in the legislation, where each casino gets

02:19a couple skins, now only the casino operator gets one skin.

02:25And that's interesting, because Penn and Caesars both have three casinos in the state.

02:30And then you look at, there's two standalone licenses, which you have to assume would probably

02:34go to DraftKings and FanDuel.

02:35So you're taking away the tethering, and that's a whole thing.

02:38But there's no connection between them and the lawsuit, at least as of yet, that's, it

02:43would be completely unfair to them to say they are at this point.

02:47So anyway, it's going to be a very interesting day tomorrow and potentially the next two

02:51months as we get to see who's going to vote, or if Missourians will get to vote at all,

02:56because if they don't win it, then it'll go off the ballot.

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