- Louisiana bettors wagered $384.5 million on mobile apps in September, up 4.6%, while Mississippi’s casino sportsbooks fell 12.9% to $34 million.
- Retail betting fell in both states, with combined handle down 25% to $54.7 million.
- Louisiana collected $8.88 million in taxes for September compared to about $435,000 in Mississippi.
BILOXI, Miss. – Mississippi and Louisiana share a coastline, a love for SEC football and plenty of bettors. But September’s reports show only one of them is growing. The Louisiana State Police’s September mobile sportsbook report shows Louisianans bet $384.5 million on their phones, up 4.6% from last year. Across the state line, the Mississippi Gaming Commission’s September sports wagering report shows casino sportsbooks wrote just $34 million, down 12.9%.
Louisiana’s apps alone took in more than 11 times what all of Mississippi did.
Retail betting fell on both sides of the border. Louisiana’s retail sportsbooks dropped 39% to $20.6 million, and combined, the amount of money bet on sports at casinos in both states fell 25% to $54.7 million.
In Mississippi, the Central region took the hardest hit. Home to the river casinos in Vicksburg and Natchez along the Louisiana border, its handle fell 26.9% to $6.3 million. The Coast still carried the state with $24.1 million, or 70.9% of all bets.
Bettors also won more often.
Mississippi’s hold fell from 17.5% to 10.6%, cutting sports betting revenue nearly in half to $3.6 million. Football did the most damage, as sportsbooks kept just 7% of $18.9 million in football bets compared to 17.1% a year ago.
Louisiana’s mobile hold slid from 12% to 10.3% as well, dropping net proceeds 10.6% to $39.6 million.
In both states, parlays kept the books afloat. Mississippi parlay cards took 23.9% of bets but produced 42% of revenue. In Louisiana, parlays brought in $24.9 million of mobile net proceeds, or 63% of the total.
The Tax Gap
Louisiana collected $8.88 million in legal sports betting taxes in September, mostly from mobile operators taxed at 21.5%. At Mississippi’s 12% rate, its casinos produced about $435,000.
That gap won’t close anytime soon. Mississippi’s House passed HB 4074 to create mobile sports wagering in February, but the bill died in the Senate’s Gaming and Finance committees in March.
Since launching in January 2022, legal Louisiana sports betting apps have handled $14.8 billion and paid $297.3 million in taxes. Legal Mississippi sports betting only crossed $3 billion last year, more than six years after its 2018 launch.
