Missouri sports betting is meeting heavy demand in the immediate aftermath of Monday’s launch.
More than 250,000 Missouri sports betting accounts were active on launch day, according to numbers released Tuesday by geolocation supplier GeoComply. Approximately 188,000 new accounts were created during the early sign-up period in the last two weeks of November, it said.
The firm, which provides location services for most Missouri online sportsbooks, processed more than 2.6 million location checks across the state on Monday alone. As seen in this video provided by GeoComply, those pings were heavily concentrated in the Kansas City and St. Louis metro areas.
Hot start for Missouri sportsbooks
Missouri sports betting went live at midnight on Monday with the first eight operators opening their digital doors to local bettors. A ninth operator using Kambi‘s platform is still pending launch, while Underdog opted out of the market to launch predictions instead.
“What we’ve seen in the first 24 hours is remarkable,” said GeoComply CEO Kip Levin. “Tens of thousands of Missourians immediately joined safe, regulated platforms the moment they became legal. It’s a powerful reminder of how quickly consumers embrace a well-regulated market when the option finally exists.”
A cursory LSR analysis suggests that Missouri could generate as much as $625 million in first-month handle and at least $60 million in revenue, fueled heavily by up-front promo spend from the leading operators.
As with all other competitive US markets, Missouri figures to be a two-horse race between national leaders FanDuel and DraftKings.
Pings, parlays, and perspective
It is difficult to put those GeoComply numbers into context, but we do have some reference numbers from the last big launch in the US. A location check does not equal a placed bet.
North Carolina converted its limited tribal retail market into a competitive online market in March 2024 during a relatively lean part of the sports calendar. In the 48 hours following that launch, GeoComply conducted more than 5.4 million location checks from 370,000 accounts. Those numbers were the first visible sparks from a first-year firestorm of wagering that reached $6.6 billion statewide.
North Carolina has a population of 11 million, just less than twice the population of Missouri (6.2 million).
Maryland is almost exactly the same size as Missouri, and its launch in late 2022 produced 16.5 million location checks from more than 475,000 accounts across the first five days of legal online betting there. Maryland’s year-one total of $4.6 billion in volume looks like a good target for Missouri over the coming 12 months.
