In 2022, the State of Kansas legalized sports betting, both in person at casinos in the state and online. It made sense then, and it continues to make sense now.
Legalizing sports betting gives the state a framework to set ground rules for sports betting and to tax it, rather than standing by as those bets go out of state, overseas, or to illegal and unregulated operations.
That’s all the praise we have for the 2022 law, though, as it fails to serve Kansans on multiple fronts.
To start with, the current arrangement doesn’t generate an appropriate amount of revenue for the state. Kansas’ nominal tax rate on sportsbooks’ gambling revenue is 10%, toward the back of the pack among states that have legalized sports betting. But because of the way Kansas calculates gambling revenue and the way the contracts with sportsbooks are set up, it is near the bottom in state revenue per $1 million wagered. Rep. Paul Waggoner tells us the state could bring in as much as nine times as much revenue from sports betting by having the Kansas Lottery contract directly with the sports betting platforms and adjusting how revenue is calculated.
How Kansas spends its revenue from sports betting is an even greater flaw with the 2022 law. We don’t object to the first $750,000 every year being allocated to the White Collar Crime Fund, supporting enforcement of gambling laws. But transferring 80% of the rest to a fund for attracting professional sports teams is an awful waste.
Through November 2025, the state transferred $31.9 million in revenue from sports betting to the Attracting Professional Sports to Kansas Fund. Maybe you’re excited that the Chiefs are moving to Kansas. That’s fine. Maybe attracting the Chiefs will pay off for Kansas in the long term.
But an average of around $10 million per fiscal year so far isn’t a make-or-break amount for the public’s roughly $2 billion commitment for the Chiefs’ future facilities in Kansas. At that rate, by the time the Chiefs are scheduled to move in 2031, sports betting will have raised about 4% of the public’s share of the project.
So while directing 80% to attracting sports teams isn’t impactful for that purpose, it also keeps that funding away from initiatives where it could be really meaningful. Only 2% of Kansas’ sports betting revenue goes to initiatives to reduce the impact of gambling addiction and problem gambling, at a time when risky gambling behaviors are rising dramatically in Kansas.
Between 2017 and 2025, the percentage of Kansas adults at high risk for problem gambling quintupled, a survey by the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services found.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the federal ban on states legalizing sports betting in 2018, online sports betting has grown wildly. Gone are the days of betting on just the outcome and margin of a game. Prop bets and parleys are all the rage, and sportsbooks love them, because they get people betting more frequently and get them used to betting.
That’s also why sportsbooks offer so many promotions to get people betting. You would be hard-pressed to get through watching a sports event on TV without hearing about all the “bonus bets” you can get.
David Purdum wrote in a report last spring for espn.com that sportsbooks spent $666 million on television ads alone in 2024. And every dollar of that $666 million was paid for out of gamblers’ losses. The old gambling adage is true: the house always wins. Making it easier and more convenient to gamble on your phone just means the house wins more and more often.
We can’t expect the Kansas Legislature to roll things back to the pre-2022 status quo of no legal sports betting in the state. But it can work to ensure that the public gets back a fairer share of gambling revenue, that more funding goes to combat gambling addiction, and just maybe add some common-sense regulations on what and how people can bet on.
– The Hutchinson Tribune Editorial Board