Kansas Will Not Have Legal Sports Betting In 2018
During the first three months of the year, the Kansas legislature presented five separate bills to address the impending PASPA overturn and legalize sports betting in the state. Four of these bills originated in the house (HB 2533, HB 2752, HB 2792, HB 2793), and one was presented in the senate (SB 455). Unfortunately, all of these died in committee, so the sports betting groundwork has to be done all over again before KS residents can wager on athletics legally within state borders. Worse, the Kansas legislature is adjourned until January of 2019, so that means that – unless there’s an emergency session – Kansas will not have legal sports betting in 2018.
As a state with several Class III commercial and tribal casinos, Kansas should have been among the first in line to offer sports betting upon the Supreme Court’s PASPA decision where the law was overturned by a vote of 6-3, but they dropped the ball for now. This is curious in several ways, but it’s primarily unfortunate because – with the NFL season looming right around the corner – Kansas could have had a head start in rolling out and gauging the success of any implemented sports betting laws right away.
After all, football season is the most active time for sports bettors in the state, and with the overwhelming action on the NFL, Kansas would have had an almost immediate avenue of strong feedback by which they could tweak their newly-minted sports betting laws and regulations. It will be far more difficult to measure the immediate economic impact of gaming in the general downtime that is the early part of the year, so when spring of 2019 rolls around, KS legislators might have less of an impetus to get sports betting laws passed, and even more delays could be possible. Hopefully, of course, that won’t be the case, as KS will see the benefit of other states that took the opportunity to implement sports betting right away.
While there is no doubt that the Kansas state government is going to implement its own legal sports betting scheme sometime within the next year or so, this delay is a tactical error economically (though it might be a tactical boon re other politics that “matter more” to the various populations within the state in the run-up to the 2018 midterms this fall).
In any case, if you live in Kansas, you can still wager on sports legally – and right now! – by using an offshore sportsbook like Bovada, SportsBetting, and the like. These top sites for Kansas sports betting have been providing KS residents with legal, safe, secure, and reputable sports betting options for years, and there’s no indication that they’re going anywhere any time soon (if ever).
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