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SportsTranscript
00:00And Pat, we begin, oh my gosh, are you serious?
00:03Like we're beginning with Mississippi again?
00:05Like, I mean, one week they're not going to be,
00:08you know, have sports betting online.
00:09The next week they are going to have it online.
00:10It feels like any time that we sort of say
00:13that Mississippi is about to launch online sports betting,
00:16somebody runs in from one of the casinos,
00:18like Robert De Niro with a bat and says,
00:19no, we're not doing that.
00:21Is that going to happen this time too?
00:23You know, it could, it very well could.
00:24And that would be a fun scene for me to watch.
00:26I think that somebody running into the state legislator
00:29with a baseball bat and just smashing things up.
00:31That'd be fun.
00:32But yeah, I mean, Mississippi, as we know,
00:35it launched in-person sports betting back in 2018.
00:39It was one of the first states to get up and running
00:41in that sense.
00:42And since then, there's been this kind of slow roll push
00:45to go online.
00:47Of course, on property, you can have the apps,
00:49but that doesn't really mean anything to anybody.
00:53And yeah, so now, you know, a lot of times
00:56in these legislative sessions,
00:57we'll see really kind of slow kind of pushes,
01:01things that don't happen for a couple of weeks,
01:03couple of months, whatever.
01:04And then all of a sudden there's a big rush.
01:06And for some reason, this session, I'm seeing things,
01:08and we'll talk about a couple more in a few minutes,
01:10kind of get really started and rolling fast.
01:13And that's exactly what's happening here in Mississippi.
01:17The online sports betting bill that was introduced
01:19by Casey Ure moved past his gaming commission committee
01:25to go to the full house floor.
01:27And so that's, I mean, that's a pretty big step.
01:29It is a step that it took last year.
01:31And in fact, it passed overwhelmingly
01:33through the house last year.
01:35So, and then went to the Senate where of course,
01:37then it kind of ran into a big buzzsaw and fell apart
01:41when they stripped the language.
01:42And then in the conference committee where they had
01:44to iron out the differences,
01:45while one had zero language and the other
01:47had all the language, the Senate just said,
01:49nah, we're not gonna vote on it.
01:52So what happens this year?
01:54Kind of depends on what kind of developments
01:56we've had in the Senate.
01:57I haven't been able to talk to anybody
01:58in the Senate side yet.
02:00We'll see, maybe there's more push.
02:04I mean, last year an industry source
02:05after it all fell apart told me there's a lot of work
02:07to be done in the Mississippi Senate
02:09to get it over the edge.
02:10And to your point, it is a lot of the locally owned casinos,
02:14not the big major regional or national casino brands
02:18like Penn and MGM and whatnot.
02:20It's the local, one or two places,
02:23one or two casino type corporations that are saying,
02:27well, we don't wanna fall behind these giant operators.
02:34And so there are some things they're trying to do.
02:36I mean, they've upped it from one skin to two skins
02:40and it's all tethered to those casinos.
02:43There's kind of a redistribution fund
02:45that might help out the casinos that aren't doing as much
02:49or choose not to do anything
02:51because they don't wanna fall behind.
02:53So there's a few things that might kind of help
02:55move the needle for those local casinos,
02:57but also might not.
02:58And they might still just dig their feet in and say,
03:00hey, we're fine with it in our casinos
03:02and everybody else can have it in their casinos.
03:04But once you go statewide, we're gonna lose everything
03:07that we've kind of tried to build and we don't want it.
03:09So, and those local companies hold a lot of power
03:13with these legislators.
03:14So, again, we'll have to see what happens
03:16and what kind of development we've had
03:18in the last year in Mississippi Senate,
03:20but I would expect it to pass the House again
03:22because it was so overwhelming last year.
03:24So we'll see where it goes
03:25and I'll keep you up to date, obviously.