Mississippi's Online Sports Betting Bill Moves Forward

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00:00And Pat, we begin, oh my gosh, are you serious?

00:03Like we're beginning with Mississippi again?

00:05Like, I mean, one week they're not going to be,

00:08you know, have sports betting online.

00:09The next week they are going to have it online.

00:10It feels like any time that we sort of say

00:13that Mississippi is about to launch online sports betting,

00:16somebody runs in from one of the casinos,

00:18like Robert De Niro with a bat and says,

00:19no, we're not doing that.

00:21Is that going to happen this time too?

00:23You know, it could, it very well could.

00:24And that would be a fun scene for me to watch.

00:26I think that somebody running into the state legislator

00:29with a baseball bat and just smashing things up.

00:31That'd be fun.

00:32But yeah, I mean, Mississippi, as we know,

00:35it launched in-person sports betting back in 2018.

00:39It was one of the first states to get up and running

00:41in that sense.

00:42And since then, there's been this kind of slow roll push

00:45to go online.

00:47Of course, on property, you can have the apps,

00:49but that doesn't really mean anything to anybody.

00:53And yeah, so now, you know, a lot of times

00:56in these legislative sessions,

00:57we'll see really kind of slow kind of pushes,

01:01things that don't happen for a couple of weeks,

01:03couple of months, whatever.

01:04And then all of a sudden there's a big rush.

01:06And for some reason, this session, I'm seeing things,

01:08and we'll talk about a couple more in a few minutes,

01:10kind of get really started and rolling fast.

01:13And that's exactly what's happening here in Mississippi.

01:17The online sports betting bill that was introduced

01:19by Casey Ure moved past his gaming commission committee

01:25to go to the full house floor.

01:27And so that's, I mean, that's a pretty big step.

01:29It is a step that it took last year.

01:31And in fact, it passed overwhelmingly

01:33through the house last year.

01:35So, and then went to the Senate where of course,

01:37then it kind of ran into a big buzzsaw and fell apart

01:41when they stripped the language.

01:42And then in the conference committee where they had

01:44to iron out the differences,

01:45while one had zero language and the other

01:47had all the language, the Senate just said,

01:49nah, we're not gonna vote on it.

01:52So what happens this year?

01:54Kind of depends on what kind of developments

01:56we've had in the Senate.

01:57I haven't been able to talk to anybody

01:58in the Senate side yet.

02:00We'll see, maybe there's more push.

02:04I mean, last year an industry source

02:05after it all fell apart told me there's a lot of work

02:07to be done in the Mississippi Senate

02:09to get it over the edge.

02:10And to your point, it is a lot of the locally owned casinos,

02:14not the big major regional or national casino brands

02:18like Penn and MGM and whatnot.

02:20It's the local, one or two places,

02:23one or two casino type corporations that are saying,

02:27well, we don't wanna fall behind these giant operators.

02:34And so there are some things they're trying to do.

02:36I mean, they've upped it from one skin to two skins

02:40and it's all tethered to those casinos.

02:43There's kind of a redistribution fund

02:45that might help out the casinos that aren't doing as much

02:49or choose not to do anything

02:51because they don't wanna fall behind.

02:53So there's a few things that might kind of help

02:55move the needle for those local casinos,

02:57but also might not.

02:58And they might still just dig their feet in and say,

03:00hey, we're fine with it in our casinos

03:02and everybody else can have it in their casinos.

03:04But once you go statewide, we're gonna lose everything

03:07that we've kind of tried to build and we don't want it.

03:09So, and those local companies hold a lot of power

03:13with these legislators.

03:14So, again, we'll have to see what happens

03:16and what kind of development we've had

03:18in the last year in Mississippi Senate,

03:20but I would expect it to pass the House again

03:22because it was so overwhelming last year.

03:24So we'll see where it goes

03:25and I'll keep you up to date, obviously.

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