Weekly News – Mississippi Lawmakers Fail to Push Legal Mobile Sports Betting

Dave Schwab Sports Betting Expert

3 minute read

The 2022 state legislative session in Mississippi is underway. This had led to a renewed effort to add legal online sports betting to the state’s existing retail sportsbook industry, but those efforts failed this week.

State Representative Cedric Burnett led the way on Jan. 4 with House Bill 184, which is aimed at legalizing mobile sports betting. HB 184 had been referred to the House Gaming Committee, but died on the floor.

Since that piece of legislation was introduced, four additional bills have been introduced addressing the matter. Another effort is being led by state Rep. Casey Eure as another strong proponent of legal online sports betting, but these efforts will not be recognized this session.

Rep. Eure along with Rep. Kevin Felsher proposed HB 997 on Jan. 17. As Chairman of the House Gaming Committee, Eure looked to be able to garner some strong support for this proposal. You can also add HB 1165 to the list with Rep. Jay McKnight fronting that effort; but .

State Senator Philip Moran introduced SB 2462 on Jan. 17 as a response to the matter from that branch of state government. Senator Scott Delano introduced SB 2652 which legalizes online sports betting “under certain conditions.”

With that much legislative activity surrounding the same basic issue, you would have to think that the legalization of online sports betting in the state is a mere formality. However, in-fighting over which bill to move forward had the ability to derail the entire effort-- and that's exactly what happened.

Current state law gives Mississippi casinos the right to offer sports betting through retail sportsbooks. A few of these gaming venues have developed mobile betting apps for on-site use. However, that does not extend past set property lines.

The general consensus among stakeholders in this issue is a partnership between in-state casinos and mobile sportsbook operators. Some of the smaller casinos have voiced their concern with this plan. However, lawmakers such as Rep. Burnett believed that casino revenue will not be impacted by mobile sports betting.

Some of the proposed legislation includes tie-ins with horse racing. Sen. Moran added language to his bill that groups together mobile sportsbooks and racebooks under one digital platform. The Senator is not alone in his desire to add legal mobile betting on horse races along with wagering on sports.

State Rep. Kenneth Walker filed HB 588. This bill called for the establishment of the Mississippi Horse Racing Commission. It too, sits listed with a disposition of "dead" in the records of Mississippi legislative measures from this year.

One motivating force for state lawmakers is the addition of legal mobile sports betting to the gaming options in neighboring Louisiana. The idea of losing possible tax revenue across state lines is always a major concern.

All this became moot over the week, as lawmakers again failed to meet the deadline to advance any meaningful sports betting bills in Mississippi.

Written by Dave Schwab, with updates by Chris Altman. You can read more about Dave, our US Sports Betting Industry Expert, here.

The featured image for this post was sourced on Wikimedia Commons. You can find image attribution info here.

Dave Schwab

Dave Schwab has been covering the sports betting industry for the past 12 years as the main focus of his specialty marketing company for online content. This endeavor followed a previous career in the field of sales and marketing in the wholesaling sector.Most of his weekly pieces focus on the rapidly expanding legal US sports betting industry. However, he still does extensive work covering betting angles that can provide a competitive edge to avid players. Dave believes that it is always a challenge to take past results and current form to try and correctly determine a future result. Sports brings out the unpredictability in what should be a fairly predictable outcome based on the stats, facts and recent trends in a particular matchup. More from Dave Schwab