It’s unclear what prompted Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann to weigh in last week on mobile sports betting.
Whatever the reasons, what he said was correct.
Expanding the enterprise in Mississippi would be a mistake, producing more headaches and less revenue than acknowledged by proponents.
Most of the legislative impetus for mobile sports betting in this state has come from the House of Representatives, where Speaker of the House Jason White is a big proponent. That chamber has tried to persuade the state’s casinos, which have a lock on in-person sports betting, to drop their resistance to online wagering by offering a tax cut. It’s also tried to get the non-betting public on board by earmarking the gambling proceeds to the state’s financially beleaguered public pension fund.
So far, those enticements have not worked, in part because the math is sketchy. During the 2026 legislative session, the House leadership estimated that legalizing mobile sports betting and taxing it at a rate of 22% would net $50 million annually for the state, even with a 25% tax cut for casinos. Less rosy predictions come up with a $20 million loss to the state treasury.
But even if the math worked, it would be poor public policy to make sports gaming more ubiquitous than it already is.
As Hosemann pointed out in his social media post, while all forms of gambling can become addictive, sports betting is particularly harmful because it appears to be most effective in hooking young adults, most notably college-age males.
Sports betting also has a corrupting influence on the athletic competitions themselves, with athletes, including at some Mississippi colleges, already being accused of taking payoffs from bettors to throw the outcome of games or to perform individually below expectations. Although there are systems in place to catch such cheating, mostly by flagging when an unusually high volume of bets is placed on a certain outcome, there is no way that these systems can keep up with the multitude of opportunities to rig a result across all sports.
Admittedly, sports betting is not going away. It’s the fastest growing aspect of wagering in this country. The gravitation toward sports betting of less-regulated, nationally operated prediction markets, such as Polymarket and Kalshi, is going to accelerate that growth even more.
Just because a harmful activity is becoming more widespread, though, that’s not a reason for the government in Mississippi to make it easier to indulge.
Mississippi got into legalized gaming by opening the door to casinos in the 1990s because it decided the tax revenues, the amenities and the jobs that the casinos created were worth the downside of a higher rate of problem gamblers. Mobile sports betting, by comparison, has mostly downsides.
The House and Jason White are expected to make another run at legalization in 2027. It is encouraging to hear that Hosemann and the Senate are not inclined to cave.
