Mississippi can get it right on mobile sports betting

Posted by author February 11, 2025 Sports

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Stephen Kent
| Special to the Mississippi Clarion Ledger

For the second year in a row, the Mississippi House has advanced legislation to legalize mobile sports betting in the state.

House Bill 1302, the Mississippi Mobile Sports Wagering Act, which includes a 12% tax on online sports wagers, addresses several concerns that doomed similar legislation in 2024 and provides for a $6 million fund to support brick-and-mortar casinos in the state, as well as critical infrastructure.

Consumers want to place sports bets, the question for Mississippi is where they’ll allow residents to do it and how much illicit online betting they’re willing to accept before establishing a legal avenue. The Mississippi Senate Gaming Committee should move this improved bill forward.

The argument against mobile sports betting has always been split between shielding casino revenues and protecting consumers from the potential harms of gambling addiction. Chiefly, lawmakers worry that allowing people to wager from home will cut into the bottom line of the state’s brick-and-mortar casinos, which themselves are a bet by the state on tax revenue gains. This led to the inclusion of a provision in HB 1302 setting up a Retail Sports Wagering Protection Fund to cover shortfalls for casinos that experience dips in their annual revenue.

Mississippi already allows in-person sports betting as of 2018, meaning that the infrastructure exists for sportsbooks to partner with local casinos and offer mobile betting options under a new legal framework.

The demand is undeniable. Nationally, Americans have close to $1.4 billion in bets placed on this week’s Super Bowl LIX. A consumer report from Paysafe showed that amongst 1,700 sports betting consumers and those interested in betting, 65% were interested in mobile options versus 46% for in-person gambling. Since the start of the NFL season, Mississippi recorded 8.7 million attempts by residents to access legal mobile sportsbooks elsewhere.

This leads consumers into shady online interactions with offshore betting operations where data is not kept safe, and credit cards are fair game for placing bets. This can be hugely damaging for consumers and can wreck household finances.

Bad actors must be weeded out of these markets and legal frameworks are the first step. One doesn’t have to like sports betting online or in-person to want it regulated tightly.

The alternative is prohibition and turning a blind eye to what your people are doing in the absence of a regulated market. An effective regulatory regime accounts for the kind of consumer behavior lawmakers can reasonably anticipate and then keeps those people as safe as possible without removing adults’ right to make adult choices.

Like in Iowa and Tennessee, HB 1302 bars the use of credit cards in online bets, and requires age verification for players, a policy piloted by Pennsylvania and Michigan. The bill allows for up to two online betting services to partner with a local casino in order to operate. The $6 million protection fund exists to serve the smaller Mississippi casinos that might not acquire online betting partners.

Much has been done to account for consumer protection and the investments made in brick-and-mortar casinos in the state.

Rep. Casey Eure, who spearheaded the legislation, made it clear that HB 1302 was designed to respect the interests of brick-and-mortar casinos while bringing Mississippi into the modern era of sports betting. An overwhelming bipartisan approval of 88-10 in the House is nothing to balk at, and it keeps Mississippi proactive in managing a valuable tax revenue stream.

The region’s casinos are increasingly lucrative and a source of employment for nearly 50,000 Mississippians, but there’s a looming generational shadow that points toward young people being less likely to frequent physical casinos. It’s not that Millennials and Gen Z don’t bet, they do, they’re simply not on track to replace the older demographic typically found in a Biloxi casino at 10 p.m. on a Friday night.

Even conservative estimates suggest that Mississippi is losing between $40 million and $80 million annually in potential tax revenue by keeping mobile sports betting illegal. That’s revenue that could be improving roads, funding education, and strengthening local economies, particularly those with smaller casinos delivering less than anticipated tax revenue.

The Mississippi Senate had valuable feedback when a sports betting bill was introduced and rejected in 2024. That feedback has been heard and the current online sports betting legislation is a vast improvement.

The future of sports betting and gaming is mobile. The only question left is whether Mississippi’s Senate Gaming Committee is ready to get out ahead or forgo another year of tax revenue gains that could give Mississippi lawmakers more financial flexibility in the years ahead.

— Stephen Kent is the Media Director and public policy analyst for the Consumer Choice Center.