This year’s campaign to legalize statewide online sports betting in Mississippi looks dead, and dragged down along with it is an attempt to ban sweepstakes casinos in the Magnolia State via legislation.
Monday was the deadline for conference committee reports on general bills and constitutional amendments to be filed in Jackson.
This included a report for S.B. 2510, which was an anti-online gambling bill (sweepstakes included) when it passed the Senate 51-0 in February.
However, that was before the Mississippi House of Representatives made some tweaks to the bill in March, including by shoehorning statewide online sports betting into the legislation.
The changes were rejected by the Senate and prompted the creation of a conference committee last week.
It appears lawmakers on the conference committee were ultimately unable to reach a compromise on S.B. 2510 and file a report, because the state legislature’s website said Monday night that the measure was dead.
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As a result, it looks like both a sweepstakes casino ban and statewide online sports betting in Mississippi via legislation may have to wait until next year.
Yet another failed effort to legalize statewide online sports betting in Mississippi highlights the lingering concerns that lawmakers in the Senate have about authorizing any form of online gambling that could potentially cannibalize the business of the state’s brick-and-mortar casinos.
Those concerns apparently outweighed the threat posed by sweepstakes casinos that have spread across the U.S., triggering action by lawmakers and regulators seeking to rein in the newer form of online gambling.
Looks like Mississippi's last, best chance at legalizing statewide online sports betting this year is dead, along with the proposed ban on sweepstakes casinos to which House lawmakers tried to attach OSB: pic.twitter.com/DWLgRJxxew
— Geoff Zochodne (@GeoffZochodne) April 1, 2025
Mississippi could still take action against sweeps operators as regulators in other states have done, such as by issuing cease-and-desist letters. But a specific, statutory ban and criminal penalties for violating that ban looks like they are off the table for now. The Mississippi legislature is scheduled to adjourn on April 6.
In the meantime, there is still legal sports betting in Mississippi, but it is confined to the properties of brick-and-mortar casinos in the state.
The House amendment to S.B. 2510 would have changed that status quo, but, like the proposed sweepstakes ban, it is dead along with the rest of the bill.
It's not a hugely surprising development, as the House passed online sports betting legislation in February, and then watched it die in a Senate committee in early March.
In the end, attaching that same legislation to an anti-sweeps bill was a losing strategy.
