Missouri Sports Betting Crashes Into Senate Roadblock

This article incorrectly named Sen. Denny Hoskins as having read from a Ronald Reagan biography. It has been updated to cite Sen. Bill Eigel as the reader.

The Missouri Senate is exceptional at raising hopes before pulling the rug out. And that is precisely what it did to sports betting supporters on Wednesday.

The Senate’s abrupt decision to talk about sports betting on Wednesday buoyed hopes that something might finally get done in the Show-Me State. 

The House already passed a sports betting bill, and public and private chatter indicated sports betting supporters were ready to call Sen. Denny Hoskins VLT bluff. Hoskins' threats to amend the bill to death (claiming he had 150 amendments to propose) when VLTs were decoupled from sports betting derailed last year’s efforts. 

It All Comes Down to VLTs

Hoskins sat in the passenger’s seat for the debate’s first half, with Sen. Karla May talking for the pro-VLT side. Later, Sen. Bill Eigel did filibuster (reading Ronald Reagan’s biography) while intimating from where he would attack. Most notably, he pointed out that the revenue from sports betting is a “drop in the bucket” and doesn’t get the state any closer to funding veteran programs or gambling treatment initiatives. He argued VLTs would.

Throughout the eight-hour debate, it became clear that the initial hope was false. The pro-sports betting side continually referenced revenue going across state lines to neighboring states, with a focus on Kansas sports betting. Sen May provided her colleagues with a glimpse into their future should they try to push sports betting past opponents during a masterclass on how to filibuster without technically filibustering. 

May, a VLT supporter, scored a decisive victory early on when she proposed allowing sports betting kiosks in the same bars and restaurants she would like to see VLT machines placed. 

During the debate, May got fellow senators to noncommittally approve of the idea, before deftly shifting the discussion back to VLTs and rhetorically asking why one machine was OK and the other wasn’t. That opened the floodgates to accusations of special interests controlling the legislative body and sealed the bill’s fate for the time being. 

“I’m OK with sports betting. I think we should have it,” May said during yesterday’s debate. “The problem is the Legislature is so stubborn and so controlled by special interests.”

The Senate spent the remaining five hours irrationally altering a sports betting bill in a vain effort to reach a compromise. What emerged was a true Frankenstein’s monster that was unrecognizable from the House bill and had some wondering if it was better not to pass it than unleash it on Missouri.