Mississippi Struggles to Legalize Online Sports Betting

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00:00You know, we're going to start off with this story here in Mississippi, tried to slide

00:04in online sports betting along with this sweepstakes ban, doesn't look like either got done here.

00:10So for people who live in Mississippi, got to take your, you know what, down to the casino,

00:16make your bet.

00:17Other than that, DraftKings, FanDuel, BetMGM, they're like raising their hand, but you got

00:21to put the hand back down for now.

00:23I mean, this, I don't know how long this is going to go on for.

00:25I'm telling you, I'm not calling out conspiracy theories from states here.

00:29But how many times are we going to talk about this without this getting done in Mississippi?

00:32I mean, there's got to be some other reasoning behind it.

00:35I mean, it is wild.

00:36And, and first of all, we were just talking Monday about this of it's in a conference

00:40committee.

00:41Maybe they can't get it done.

00:42Well, it didn't.

00:43Yeah, it's been a lot in Mississippi.

00:46I mean, they legalized in-person sports betting in 2018.

00:49I mean, that's right.

00:50That's among the first states that got any sports betting.

00:54And since then, lawmakers have continually tried to figure out how to expand it to include

00:58online sports betting.

00:59But then there's lots of other lawmakers who are, you know, friendly with the local casinos,

01:05we'll say.

01:06And they're supporting these local casinos who are concerned of any sort of revenue cannibalization

01:12or losing out to big operators partnered with national casino chains or the like.

01:17So that's kind of where you're at.

01:18This year, there was a big house bill that was introduced.

01:21It included, you know, some, some changes from last year to help kind of ease the fears

01:27of those local casinos, including a big six million annual, six million dollar annual

01:31fund to kind of help mitigate any sort of losses from those local casinos.

01:35Also allowed up to two operators per casino versus one.

01:40And you know, that didn't work.

01:42That passed the house very overwhelmingly.

01:44I think it was like an 88 to 10 vote.

01:46It fell on deaf ears in the Senate.

01:49But the Senate at the same time was introduced a sweepstakes ban that we're seeing in nearly

01:55a dozen States nationwide that are banning those online sweepstakes operators that are,

02:00you know, kind of in an unregulated gray area for a lot of these gambling markets.

02:06And that passed overwhelmingly in the Senate and went over to the house, the house sponsor

02:11of that sports betting bill then said, Hey, if this is passing, let's go ahead and add

02:14my sports betting language.

02:16They did.

02:17They passed it.

02:18The Senate, as soon as they got back, they said, Nope, that's, that's a no go.

02:21Let's, let's go to conference committee.

02:22And then in conference committee, it died.

02:24They just said, Nope, we can't come to an agreement on either of these issues.

02:28Let's go ahead and punt it to next year again.

02:30And so, yeah, to your point, they've been trying since 2018, really, to get online sports

02:34betting going.

02:35And 2023, there was an online sports betting task force that was put together to kind of

02:39help inform and say, like, let's do it this way.

02:42And that's still not working.

02:43So yeah, this is kind of a, just a back and forth tennis match between parties, I guess,

02:49not necessarily political parties, but parties of pro and anti gambling to see what happens.

02:55And it will, could it be next year?

02:57It could.

02:58Will it be next year?

02:59We will just have to wait and see.

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