Kansas Lottery sportsbooks won big when Eagles mauled KC Chiefs in Super Bowl LIX | Opinion
Super Bowl LIX was a heartbreaker for Kansas football fans, an epic blowout where the Philadelphia Eagles mauled our Kansas City Chiefs to the tune of 40-22 — in a game that was never as contested as even that lopsided final score would indicate.
But when the Chiefs lose, the state of Kansas wins.
So, after two straight years of Chiefs victories and dismal Super Bowl betting returns for state-sponsored sportsbooks, the Kansas Lottery finally has a big win to celebrate. You can almost hear the Philly fight song “Fly, Eagles Fly” emanating from the Lottery’s Topeka headquarters.
February revenue results released Thursday show that the sportsbooks associated with the four Lottery-owned casinos reported a profit of $23.9 million on $216 million in bets.
That means the state’s 10% piece of the action is just shy of $2.4 million for the month — almost eight times what it was last year when the Chiefs won the Super Bowl.
The February results were close to the state’s most profitable month ever for sports betting.
The standing record was set in November last year, with the state-approved sportsbooks raking in about $25.5 million and the state $2.55 million.
There wasn’t any particular event that month that was of special interest to Kansans, and similar windfalls were pretty much the story across the nation. Industry analysts attributed it to the calendar, because sports betting peaks on weekends, and November 2024 was the rare month that had five Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.
Betting on our team
Whatever the odds or point spread, here in Kansas, we always bet on our (close-enough-to) home team.
Anybody who bet the Chiefs to win the Super Bowl (and cover a 1 to 1.5 point spread) got shellacked, make no mistake about it.
Prop bets — where gamblers can bet on players’ individual performance, were kind of a mixed bag.
The two most popular Chiefs are the quarterback, Patrick Mahomes, and tight end and Taylor Swift boyfriend Travis Kelce.
With a 50-yard garbage-time touchdown toss late in the game against Philly’s backup defenders, Mahomes covered Chiefs’ fans bets on his passing yards, getting 257 against a betting line of 251.5.
The Chiefs faithful who put their money on Kelce were deeply disappointed. He only got 39 receiving yards against a betting line of 60.5.
For the Lottery, last month was a long throw from the Februaries of 2024 and 2023, when the Chiefs won back-to-back Super Bowls and Kansas bettors walked out smiling.
Last February, when the Chiefs beat the San Francisco 49ers in the big game, the state made only about $305,000 in revenue, about half its monthly average for 2024.
And that was still better than February 2023, when the Chiefs beat the Eagles in the Super Bowl and the state’s share of sports betting revenue for the entire month was a paltry $1,134.
Last month’s big Super Bowl payoff takes us a small step closer to the day when Kansas may have a top-tier professional sports team of its own.
Nearly 80% of the state’s revenue from sports betting goes into a fund to eventually finance a multi-billion-dollar stadium, an effort to try to lure the Chiefs and/or the baseball Royals to leave Kansas City, Mo., and play their games on our side of the state line.
Just think, if we didn’t have that fund, the state would probably be wasting our gambling dollars on something frivolous like schools.
This story was originally published March 13, 2025 at 12:10 PM.
