At noon on Sept. 1, Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly put $15 on the Kansas City Chiefs to win the Super Bowl. That move kicked off a sports betting frenzy that’s lasted the entire month.
Kansas continues wagering away, while Missouri sports bettors try, in vain, to join in on the fun, making over 340,000 failed attempts to wager at Kansas sportsbooks through Friday morning.
Kansas blocks 340,000 Missouri sports betting attempts
Eager Missourians were already frustrated over their neighbor launching sports betting while it’s still banned in the Show-Me State. They became even more upset after Kansas blocked 16,000 wagering attempts from them on the first day alone.
GeoComply Solutions, which performs geolocation checks on mobile sports bettors, automatically blocks all wagers attempted outside of Kansas state lines. And after Day 1, those blocked attempts only became more prevalent.
Since launch on Sept. 1, the company’s geofencing technology has successfully blocked over 340,000 attempts from Missouri residents outside Kansas through Friday.
Geodata shows that bettors in both metropolitan hubs — Kansas City in the west and St. Louis in the east — continue attempting to place bets in vain.
The majority of those blocked transactions — 57% to be exact — came from Kansas City, Missouri.
Chiefs home opener
The Kansas City Chiefs home opener Thursday gave the country an instant classic. The Chiefs held off the Chargers 27-24, though not without creating a nailbiter of a game for fans. During that game alone, 48,000 Missouri bettors attempted to place bets on mobile Kansas sportsbooks. That’s 15% of all blocked wagers since launch.
This is far from the first instance where Missouri has shown its enthusiasm for sports betting. Residents made 157,000 attempts to access Illinois sportsbooks in the month of August.
Kansas sports betting off to fast start
Although Kansas sports betting debuted on Sept. 1 as a soft launch, its limited number of sports betting options didn’t seem to deter players from placing wagers.
Geocomply recorded more than 522,000 check-ins across all mobile apps within the first eight hours alone. It also blocked numerous attempts by residents across the border in Kansas City, MO, to place a wager.
According to the data, 60% of thos blocked attempts came from the Missouri side of K.C.
John Pappas, a spokesperson with Geocomply, noted how “impressive” the early returns were for Kansas. Indeed, when examined proportionally based on the adult population, more Kansas adults placed wagers (6.7% of the population) than New York adults did (3.3%) in its first eight hours of legal sports betting.
Opening Weekend: The frenzy continues
Come the first weekend of launch (Sept. 1-4) Geocomply registered more than 2 million unique geochecks from 136,000 devices. Most of them came from iPhones (81%), while only a small handful came from Android (16%) devices.
The top five Kansas cities where wagers were placed include:
- Overland Park
- Kansas City
- Wichita
- Olathe
- Lawrence
The launch coincided with opening weekend for both the University of Kansas and Kansas State football. KU fans recorded over 1,400 geolocated transactions from David Booth Stadium (12% of all Lawrence transactions on the day). And K-State fans recorded a whopping 3,500 geolocated transactions at Bill Snyder Family Stadium (25% of all Manhattan transactions for the day).
As the heat maps suggest, home fans dominated weekend wagering activity — much like Kansas home teams dominated on the field.
Missouri social media reacts to Kansas launch
Missourians have been watching from the outside as Kansas gets sports betting off the ground. And though it technically isn’t a race, it’s sure felt like one.
Kansas City, MO, Mayor Quinton Lucas, did an admirable job of celebrating Kansas’ success while hinting at some resentment over his own state’s failure to reach the finish line. He tweeted:
“Congrats on sports betting, Kansas. Enjoy the increased revenue that your neighbors to the east will not see. Be kind to the many Missourians coming over to play responsibly.”
Congrats on sports betting, Kansas. Enjoy the increased revenue that your neighbors to the east will not see.
Be kind to the many Missourians coming over to play responsibly.
— Mayor Q (@QuintonLucasKC) September 1, 2022
While Lucas caught flak from some constituents for deriding Missouri, most took the obvious satire as a push for legal sports betting in The Show Me State.
Mark the Overseer (@MarkTheOverseer), a Kansas City, MO, radio host, podcaster and producer, promoted #Kansassportsbetting when previewing his radio show.
With #KansasSportsBetting kicking off at noon, don’t forget to listen to my first ever college football pick ‘em program, coming to your radios every Saturday morning at 8 am on @kcmotalkradio throughout the entirety of the CFB season! Talking various games and betting lines!
— Mark the Overseer 👀 (@MarkTheOverseer) September 1, 2022
For many, the excitement over legal, regulated Kansas sports betting prompted some hilarious memes.
“How many bets do you plan on making today?” #KansasSportsBetting
People in Kansas:
pic.twitter.com/zfVlV1i5xF— SideAction (@SideActionHQ) September 1, 2022
Where to wager in Kansas
The soft launch of Kansas’ new sports betting industry included a mix of in-person and mobile betting options.
Bettors can find retail sportsbooks at two brick-and-mortar Kansas casinos:
- Hollywood Casino, Kansas City
- Kansas Star Casino, Mulvane
For Missourians looking to get in on the action, remember that mobile sports betting is geofenced. Although you can download sports betting apps from anywhere, you’ll need to cross the border into Kansas before officially placing your bets.
The mobile sportsbooks currently operating in Kansas are:
- DraftKings
- BetMGM
- Caesars
- FanDuel
- PointsBet
- Barstool
Two Kansas casinos also offer mobile sports betting, though neither location features a traditional physical sportsbook:
- Boothill Casino, Dodge City
- Kansas Crossing, Pittsburg
