The Mississippi Legislature is expected next session to again debate whether the state should go all in on sports gambling.
For the last three years, the House, with the encouragement of Speaker Jason White, has passed bills to fully legalize mobile sports betting, only to see the proposals die in the Senate.
Two recent reports underscore why the Senate should continue to be reluctant.
The first, released in August, was a study done by researchers at the University of Mississippi. Their survey of nearly 1,600 college students in the state found that sports betting is already prevalent on college campuses, that it is leading to an increased problem with gambling addiction, and that students who do bet make little distinction between whether they do so legally or illegally.
The Ole Miss research substantiates the findings of a nationwide study conducted in 2023 by the NCAA warning of the increasing prevalence of sports betting among college students and its addictiveness.
Just as disconcerting is the increased incidence of forbidden betting by college athletes on their own games and their own performances. The NCAA announced last week that it is investigating 13 men’s college basketball players who, while competing for their schools, allegedly placed bets for or against their own teams. Some also may have altered their play to win their bets or help other bettors whom they had tipped off. Mississippi Valley State University, according to the NCAA, was one of the six schools for which the athletes played at the time of the gambling scheme.
If Mississippi’s current restrictions on sports betting are lifted, these problems are bound to become more common.
Why so?
Mississippi presently limits sports bets to being placed while inside a casino. There are ways to circumvent that restriction, of course, and technologically savvy college students have had no problem finding workarounds. For example, they can use a virtual private network, or VPN, to make it appear they are placing their online bets from a state where it is legal. Or they can use bookies, in exchange for a fee, to place bets for them in states or countries where the gambling is legal.
Those workarounds, though, can take time and may not be as conducive to the type of sports bets that are the most addictive and most susceptible to cheating by the athletes or their coaches. These so-called “proposition bets” are not based on the final outcome of a contest but rather the performance of specific athletes or even small details within a game, such as the next football play. Bettors can be enticed into wagering in real time on games that are not even close, and computer logarithms can be created to send a steady stream of proposition bets to those who have shown a weakness for them.
Legislative proponents of statewide sports betting base their case largely on the additional revenue it could bring to the state coffers. That’s estimated to be $40 million to $80 million a year, money that the House says could be used to prop up the state’s financially stressed Public Employees’ Retirement System.
But at what cost? Casinos, which provide not just tax dollars but also hotels and other non-gaming amenities, could see their business eroded by competitors that don’t make those kinds of infrastructure investments. Merchants could feel the pinch, since money spent on gambling is money that’s not available for shopping. Most importantly, all vices can be addictive if not practiced in moderation. When the bombardment of advertising for sports betting is combined with an easy entry into it, it’s going to produce problem gamblers.
Between nearly three dozen casinos and a statewide lottery, Mississippi already provides ample temptation for people of all income levels to blow their money. Does it really need yet another lure?
