Mississippi Sports Betting Regulations Approved
Mississippi joined West Virginia yesterday in approving regulations pertaining to sports betting. On Thursday, the Mississippi Gaming Commission approved sports betting regulations and gave the OK for casinos to begin taking wagers as soon as 30 days from yesterday.
That gives us an earliest possible start date of Saturday, July 21st for legal sports betting in Mississippi. However, the timeline is dependent on how quickly casinos can get everything prepared to launch their betting operations.
In any case, sports betting will be coming to Mississippi shortly. Football fans, you know what that means: Mississippi will most likely have sports betting in time for the next NFL season. The Mississippi sports betting regulations also gave the OK to betting on college sports, including collegiate teams based in MS.
You can see some of the major rules and regulations in our post from just a few days ago here, but we’ll go ahead and recap below.
Where to Bet on Sports in Mississippi
Licensed casinos in Mississippi will be able to offer sports betting after receiving authorization from the Mississippi Gaming Commission. Tribal casinos do not fall under the purview of the state Gaming Commission, but are expected to begin sports betting in the near future with a similar set of their own regulations.
Sports betting will be restricted to taking place on casino premises. The regulations do approve mobile betting, but only for patrons who are located on casino property at the time. This means there will be no online sports betting in Mississippi at this time unless you are actually at a licensed casino.
Types of Bets Accepted
Sports fans will be able to bet on a full range of professional, collegiate and Olympic events. Other amateur sports will not be eligible for wagering. Mississippi sports betting regulations also prohibit betting on the outcomes of political elections.
All the major types of bets that one could place at Nevada sportsbooks will also be allowed under MS gaming rules. Representatives of the major sports leagues had requested the ability to ask the Gaming Commission to ban certain types of prop bets deemed to be high-risk in terms of their ability to compromise integrity.
These types of wagers, such as who commits the first foul in a basketball game or what the first pitch of the baseball game is are viewed as more threatening by the sports leagues due to these being relatively easy ways for athletes to collude with gamblers without throwing an entire game.
Gaming regulators saw it differently and decided to leave Mississippi sportsbooks with a wide range of options in deciding what types of bets they offer.
The sports leagues also asked for Mississippi to require sports betting operators to rely on official data supplied by the leagues. In this matter, too, regulators disagreed. Casinos and the Gaming Commission will be free to choose their own data sources.
Sports Leagues Unimpressed
In addition to missing out on having control over types of bets allowed and forcing Mississippi sportsbooks to rely on official league data, the leagues also missed out on collecting an integrity fee from betting operators.
The Clarion Ledger reported that the PGA’s Andy Levinson said the new rules “put sports fans, sports bettors, athletes and professional sports themselves at risk” after the Commission approved the rules.
Mike Murphy is the founder of BettingUSA.com and has over 10 years of experience in the legal gambling industry. A regular attendee of industry trade shows and conferences, Mike is a strong proponent in the idea of a well regulated online betting industry.
