Short shrift for latest online gambling bill in Mississippi

Mississippi Representative Bobby Moak’s attempt to legalise online gambling in the southern state has failed at the committee stage…barely three weeks since he introduced it for the second time in as many years.

Moak’s House Bill 254 met the same fate this week as did his HB 1372 in 2012 . The bill died in committee after being double-referred to Gaming and Ways and Means this week.

The Democrat politician’s bill proposed to regulate, license and tax online gaming at 5 percent of gross revenues. The bill would have restricted online gaming licenses to those companies already holding land licenses to operate in the state.

Since the inception of legal land casino gaming in Mississippi in the ‘nineties, efforts to enact a state lottery or other major changes have met with opposition from the churches and from the big casino companies.

Moak’s bills were the exception, at least from the land casino perspective; because the bill protected them from competition from new online-only gaming companies, many of the big casino operators supported the measure. As a former chairman of the Legislature’s House Gaming Committee, Moak would have known that.

Related and similar