Missouri fee rejects banning some school sports activities bets

The Missouri Gaming Commission on Thursday denied a request from the National Collegiate Athletic Association to ban sure school sports activities wagers.

The fee voted 3-0 to disclaim the request. However, commissioners indicated they might be open to discussing it once more.

“We will continue to look at this issue, we will be tasking the staff with providing us as much information to educate ourselves going forward,” Commission Chair Jan Zimmerman mentioned. “So that if additional information changes our perspective with regard to this issue, that we have the opportunity to revisit it at a time that’s appropriate.”

In a letter to Commission Executive Director Michael Leara, the NCAA requested the state ban sure sorts of bets on school sports activities.

The NCAA wished Missouri to ban betting on particular person school athletes, usually known as participant prop bets. The affiliation additionally wished a ban on first-half wager level spreads on males’s and ladies’s basketball video games.

“To better protect student-athletes, game officials and competitions, state laws and regulations must be amended to remove the types of bets we know are being manipulated,” the letter, signed by NCAA President Charlie Baker, mentioned.

There are quite a few ongoing betting scandals in sports activities, together with school basketball. A federal indictment spanning three years was lately unsealed and named a former St. Louis University basketball participant.

In the letter addressed to Leara, Baker mentioned the NCAA has opened investigations of doable sport manipulation by “approximately 40 student-athletes across 20 schools over the past year.”

Missourians voted to approve a constitutional modification legalizing sports activities betting in 2024. It started within the state on Dec. 1, 2025.

In Missouri, betting on school sports activities is extra restrictive than skilled sports activities. Currently, Missourians can place bets on school groups, however not on particular person athletes on Missouri groups or their opponents. However, they’ll guess on out-of-state school athletes.

That means putting bets on Missouri successful a basketball sport can be authorized, whereas betting on particular gamers or gamers on the opponent’s workforce is just not allowed.

But Missouri residents, for instance, may have additionally legally guess on both Indiana or Miami gamers within the latest College Football Playoff National Championship Game.

Illinois legal guidelines on sports activities betting are just a little stricter. They don’t enable for wagers on any sporting occasion that includes an Illinois school workforce.

In response to the NCAA’s request, a number of sports activities betting operators submitted their opposition to the change.

Circa Sports, one of many corporations that has a betting license in Missouri, mentioned the main target ought to be on “robust enforcement mechanisms and strong penalties.”

Zimmerman mentioned this request and the data round it proves there “is just so much we don’t know,” particularly since sports activities betting has solely been authorized in Missouri for a short while.

“I just don’t feel that I have enough information to grant a request by the NCAA to prohibit this type of sports wagering because I don’t know enough yet, and I certainly want to know more, and I want to be allowed the option to continue to look at this,” Zimmerman mentioned.

Commissioner Kevin Spaulding echoed that it’s necessary to collect extra details about the difficulty.

“I would feel much more comfortable with some additional information before I made a decision one way or the other,” Spaulding mentioned.