After The Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 that has effectively outlawed sports betting nation-wide has been ruled unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court, many states have ushered in to decide whether to legalize gambling and sports betting since they now have an opportunity to decide for themselves. As you may imagine, many states already passed the vote and bills that will legalize betting and gambling and Kansas is one of them.
The potential revenue gains from taxation is an opportunity many states in the U.S. aren’t willing to let slip them by. Today sources like Kansas Sports Betting Online are providing guides on how to place sports wagers in Kansas but the only thing that remains is form online sports betting in Kansas to be officially launched. With that in mind, here’s the state of sports betting in Kansas.
The legal landscape of sports betting in Kansas
The Kansas House managed to pass SB 84 law by voting 88-36 in favor on March 30th, 2022. This law officially legalized sports betting in Kansas. On May 12th, gov. Laura Kelly signed the bills that will be the foundation for Kansas online sports betting industry.
The goal, however, was to st everything up and accept first legal online sports wagers before the 2022 football season when sportsbooks are the busiest. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen and it seems there’s more work to be done.
The law officially went into effect on July 1st, 2022 but the state of Kansas predicts everything be ready no longer than January 1st, 2023 perhaps even sooner if everything goes well enough.
Therefore, online sports betting is, indeed, legal in Kansas as of July 1st, only bettors can’t place online wagers yet. They still have to do so manually and in person at brick-and-mortar establishments.
Why Kansas is behind on sports betting
As mentioned before, online sports betting is, in fact, legal in Kansas but the state is still way behind when it comes to formal structure for everything. The main reason is that there are still challenges to overcomes.
Some of these challenges include partnerships between online sportsbooks and brick-and-mortar casinos that need to be struck, legislation to be reviewed, licenses to be obtained and regulatory processes to be put in place, among other things of course.
That said, each land-based casino in Kansas can partner up with up to three online sports betting apps and open their own retail sportsbook. They are also allowed to partner up with up to 50 retailers that offer betting kiosks and allow a mobile sportsbook partner to set up their sports venue.
This applies for four non-tribal casinos that operate in the state of Kansas. Everyone hopes that all of this will be made possible until September 8th when the next NFL season officially begins, which would be much more preferable than having to wait yet another year for online sports betting to launch.
Would any new regulations need to be put in place to allow for sports betting in Kansas?
The main reason new regulations have to be put in place is that gambling in general was officially banned in Kansas up until recently, with exception of tribal casinos, of course. Now that the US Supreme Court has allowed each state to regulate gambling and sports betting on their own, each state must decide on the best way to do so and not rush the process. Kansas is no exception here and thing have been slow.
This is especially true because Senate bill 84 was already introduced in Kansas back in 2021. The SB 84 managed to pass the Senate but it did not pass the House which placed everything to a halt for that year. Even though the House terminate all hopes of legalizing gambling in Kansas in 2021, the government wasn’t about to give up.
Only in 2022 did Kansas managed to rejuvenate the bill and formally proceed with legalization of gambling. As you might imagine, even with everyone hoping for the best it may take more than a year to set everything up and introduce new regulations that will make the online sports betting legal and operational.
Now that sports betting has officially been legalized in the state of Kansas, everyone is excited about it going live. However, there are still procedures to implement and regulations to review so it might take a while for online sports betting to officially launch. Whether this will be over before or after the next NFL season remains to be seen. People are hopeful that everything will be settled sooner rather than later.