About
In 2024, Missouri voters narrowly approved Amendment 2, legalizing sports betting and dedicating new revenue to education. Guidant ran the winning campaign – managing everything from signature gathering and coalition-building to polling, strategy, and media. The campaign marked a turning point for the sports betting industry after a series of high-profile failures in other states. Guidant’s strategy delivered the victory, overcoming enormous opposition spending and a skeptical electorate to pass the measure by the slimmest of margins – securing a breakthrough at a time when legalization efforts has faltered elsewhere.
Challenge
Amendment 2 faced more than $14 million in opposition spending – a record for any Missouri ballot initiative – and was opposed by entrenched industry players determined to protect their market advantage. Meanwhile, lingering public distrust of state gambling promises, particularly broken lottery funding commitments, fueled voter skepticism.
Compounding the problem:
- The State Treasurer issued a flawed fiscal note suggesting the measure could generate as little as $0 in revenue.
- Opponents challenged ballot signatures in court, trying to knock the measure off the ballot entirely.
- Internal industry expectations were low after prior legalization attempts had failed in California and didn’t even make the ballot in Florida.
To win, we had to overcome legal obstacles, rebuild public trust, and persuade skeptical voters – often through carefully targeted, nontraditional tactics.
Solution
We built the campaign around precision and credibility, starting with a strategic coalition and carrying those principles into every piece of messaging and outreach. Guidant:
- Unified every professional sports team in Missouri – including the Chiefs, Cardinals, Royals, and Blues – alongside labor unions, teachers, civic leaders, and bipartisan elected officials.
- Designed targeted voter models to identify persuadable subgroups like evangelical voters, older women, and blue-collar swing voters.
- Developed creative strategies emphasizing teacher pay, school funding, and fairness — often using real parents and educators as messengers.
- Commissioned an independent economic study to debunk the Treasurer’s flawed revenue claims and provide credible data about education funding.
- Paired unlikely allies in our TV ads — conservative Republican and progressive Democratic state senators — standing side by side to support Amendment 2.
- Used nontraditional tactics to earn media and reach voters, including having sports mascots deliver the petition signatures to the Secretary of State and running digital ads targeted specifically to modeled sports fans.
Every element of the campaign was built to reinforce trust, strengthen credibility, and reach the right voters in the right way.
Results
Amendment 2 passed – narrowly, by fewer than 3,000 votes – but decisively enough to withstand the onslaught. It was the closest statewide ballot initiative win in Missouri in two election cycles, and the first ever to survive more than $3 million in opposition spending, let alone $14 million.
The measure is now being implemented, legal sports betting is available across the state, and Missouri schools are projected to receive more than $100 million in new funding over five years.
At a time when the sports betting industry had suffered high-profile defeats in other states, Guidant delivered one of the year’s most surprising and significant public affairs victories – combining creativity, data, and unshakable discipline to overcome the odds.