Missouri Business Alert | By Karina Grokhovskaya

Missouri saw a major decrease in sports betting revenue in June, despite FIFA World Cup games going on in the latter half of the month.

According to the Missouri Gaming Commission, total taxable revenue was $13.67 million, a 36% decrease from the previous month, and roughly $1.37 million was collected in sports wagering taxes. The number of wagers also decreased by 12% in June to 7.34 million.

The total amount wagered in June was $258.3 million, a 0.8% increase from May.

The total payouts for both mobile and retail sports bets were roughly $233.6 million in June.

Neil Schwartz, President of SBRnet, said the reason for the major decrease in revenue is fewer people placing bets overall.

"It basically has nothing to do with people winning or losing, because frankly, you know they win either way. The state wins either way, so it's just about less people placing bets," Schwartz said.

Almost all sports bets were made on mobile betting sites, accounting for 99.5% of all money wagered. The top mobile betting app was DraftKings, receiving roughly $103 million in wagers and 3.36 million wagers placed.

Parlays continue to be the most popular betting method, with 45% of all sports bets being parlays across both retail and mobile. Soccer accounted for about 10.5% of all bets, followed behind by baseball with nearly 10% of all bets.

Schwartz said the reason for the continued interest in parlays is the lure of winning big.

"There's a reason why gambling companies don't go out of business, and it's because of things like parlays," Schwartz said. "Using teaser bets and parlays and things like that, you know, tend to suck people in."

According to Schwartz, the introduction of prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket has slowly worn away the novelty of traditional sports betting platforms.

"You're not doing parlays, they're not doing teaser bets, they're not doing a lot of those other traditional things that are done with sports gambling," Schwartz said.

This story was first published by Missouri Business Alert, a fellow member of the KC Media Collective.