Campaign to legalize sports betting in Missouri gets help from mascots to haul voter signatures
By SUMMER BALLENTINE
Associated Press
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Missouri’s professional sports teams are one step closer to putting a proposal to legalize sports betting before voters this year. Cardinals mascot Fredbird, the Royals’ Sluggerrr and St. Louis Blues mascot Louie on Thursday hauled boxes of voter signatures in support of the initiative to the Missouri Secretary of State’s Office in Jefferson City. Supporters needed to collect roughly 180,000 voter signatures to get sports betting on the ballot. The campaign says it gathered more than 340,000. Missouri is one of a dozen states where sports betting remains illegal more than five years after the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for states to adopt it. Sports betting bills have repeatedly failed in Missouri’s state Legislature.