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Each new year brings with it the hopes (pipe dreams?) for healthier habits, slimmer waistlines, increased time spent reading instead of watching — and likely for anyone reading this, interest in seeing more legalized gambling opportunities.
We already know for sure that North Carolina sports betting is coming in 2024, to be preceded this year by Vermont, which launches next Thursday. A group of sports betting apps will hopefully be allowed to launch in North Carolina in March, and DraftKings and BetMGM both issued announcements Friday that they’ve lined up the necessary partnerships with North Carolina sports organizations or venues in order to be ready.
That reference above to pipe dreams might be apt for anything happening soon to bring sports betting sites to either California or Texas, but there’s plenty of talk about it in those big states — one with a potential new ballot initiative in November and one with sale of an NBA franchise to a casino industry family eager for gambling expansion.
On a smaller scale, while Mississippi was among the first states to legalize retail sportsbooks, it has been surpassed in tax benefit to the state by its many peers that have since embraced mobile sports betting. It is a rather out-of-date and costly quirk that Mississippi allows adults to bet on a game at its casinos but denies them the chance to do so by phone or computer.
It’s possible that inconsistency will be remedied this year, as a state task force recently released a report making a strong case for the benefits of adding digital betting in Mississippi. It will likely receive at least some level of discussion in the new legislative session, where if any action is taken to expand sports betting, it will occur before the session ends May 5.
As to whether any state without any kind of legal sports betting currently will enact legislation this year to allow it, odds don’t seem encouraging, but Georgia, Missouri, and Minnesota are among the most viable candidates.
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No one will be tracking all of these developments throughout 2024 better than the staff of , and that’s only part of our broad coverage of the sports betting industry, as shown by the recently published stories linked below. And be sure to check out own weekly Double Down column recapping the week of broad gambling industry news, in addition to its podcast.
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