Will Online and Mobile Betting be Finally Available in the State of Mississippi?
By Space Coast Daily // February 14, 2020
The United States is becoming more welcoming when it comes to the legislation of sports betting in the country.
Sports betting has been decriminalized in May 2018 when the Supreme Court of the United States has stricken down the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) of 1992.
PASPA has mainly been the reason why sports betting hasn’t expanded in the country for a really long time. Only four states were exempted from this act thanks to pre-existing laws that have protected them from this. These are the states of Delaware, Oregon, Montana, and Nevada.
When the Supreme Court released its decision concerning PASPA in May 2018, many states immediately worked on legalizing and regulating the operations of sports betting within their territories.
In the same year, states like New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Mississippi all have signed betting into law with different regulations.
As of today, there are already 20 states that have signed betting into law with Michigan as the most recently added state on the list.
With how things are going, experts are predicting that by 2024, the US may have a total of 40 states that would legalize betting. That means over 50 percent of the American population could finally wager on sports locally by then.
Federally, placing bets online with offshore casinos and bookies is not illegal in the US. This means that Americans are free to place bets on sites like 1xBit if they prefer.
This won’t really get them in trouble as long as they gamble safely and avoid the black market. Basically, it’s only the local operations of sports betting that is illegal in many of the states in the US. This includes Utah where any betting law isn’t likely to be passed in the near future.
Now, each state is different in terms of how they want to regulate betting and what they want to do with the tax revenues. Some states would allow the tax revenue they get from betting to education while others would use it for other state development projects.
In terms of regulations, not all states that signed betting into law allow both in-person and online wagering. The states of New York and Mississippi are known to only allow in-person betting.
However, even if both states do not have online betting yet, both appear to be doing differently in terms of betting revenues.
Mississippi is doing good in terms of betting revenues. The Mississippi Gaming Commission recently released a report that in January alone, the local casinos were able to get bets worth 6.7 million US dollars and this was mainly thanks to the Super Bowl. This means that the industry made 5 million dollars more for January of this year compared to last year’s.
Mississippi has launched betting not long after PASPA being ruled out by the Supreme Court. It launched betting in August 2018, and so far, the industry is doing well even if it’s without online betting.
However, the former CEO of the American Gaming Association Geoff Freeman expressed how the state is still missing out. He said that the state is simply leaving money out on the table by not signing online betting into law just yet.
New Jersey and Pennsylvania are both getting majority or over 80 percent of their betting revenues from the mobile sector.
Now, Mississippi definitely knows this as it is expected that more bills regarding online betting will be forwarded to the house state this year.
There have been a couple of bills forwarded last year, but these never really made it to the governor’s desk. It’s still hard to predict whether the state will have online betting before this year ends.
New York is struggling to get the revenue it is hoping to get mainly because of the lack of mobile betting in the state and that it has neighboring states that have already legalized online betting like New Jersey.
Since the state launched betting in July 2019, it was only able to get around 7 million US dollars of revenue by the end of the year.
This is very far from what New Jersey is making each month alone. In fact, New Jersey is benefiting from what New York is lacking.
There have been reports that New Yorkers would travel to New Jersey with their mobile devices to place their bets instead of driving upstate to place in-person bets in the state’s licensed casinos.
Based on recent happenings, it’s still hard to tell whether New York will have online betting launched this year, but many are hopeful about it.
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