Sports gambling advances — maybe — in Georgia, Mississippi

On the same day last week, the Georgia Senate and Mississippi House passed sports gambling bills. Betting can now begin on whether either becomes law.

You wouldn’t be likely to scare up many people willing to put their money on the Georgia bill. The bill, which sets up a complicated mechanism to run sports gambling under the wing of the Georgia Lottery Corporation, passed the Senate Thursday with the last-minute addition of an amendment by Sen. Bill Cowsert, which requires passage of a constitutional amendment by voters for the plan to move forward.

Since an official amendment does not yet exist at this point, this adds a new degree of difficulty to the legislation as it moves to the House. The bill has a variety of critics in the House, with time to plot its demise. It’s not dead, but its prospects look a lot more complicated.

The bill that the Mississippi House passed a little later that day offers us what could be a valuable lesson in the way gambling legislation evolves. They’ve had sports betting since 2018, but only in the state’s casinos.

This foretold the compromise that was reached in the bill that passed in Jackson Thursday. The casinos feared competition from “mobile sports betting,” another way of saying gambling by phone. So, under the provisions of the bill, Missis

sippi-based online gambling operations have to partner with individual casinos to do business.

It’s not at all uncommon, by the way, for one type of gambling operation to emerge as the biggest obstacle to the establishment of another. That’s become commonplace in legislatures across the country.

If you think Mississippi’s plan sounds kind of gimcrack, consider Georgia’s. Under this plan, Georgia Lottery would issue 16 licenses, with seven to go to sports betting companies and the remainder distributed to the five major Atlanta sports franchises, NASCAR, Georgia Lottery, PGA, and Augusta National.

Is the Georgia Lottery going to hold a license in a consortium run by the Georgia Lottery? For that matter, are the Braves or the Hawks going to hold a license that lets people bet on their games? The bill states, by the way, that having the Lottery in charge “ensures that sports betting is operated in this state with integrity and dignity and free of political influence.”

Another question: Do people bet on soccer? It would be interesting to know if the authors of the bill had any contact with the soccer officials planning to make Atlanta a hot spot in the 2026 World Cup.

The sponsor of the Mississippi predicted before last week’s vote that online gambling would bring an additional $25 million to $35 million in tax money to the state in its first year of operations.

When you think about it, Mega Millions and Powerball give away jackpots that large on virtually a weekly basis. Negotiators in the Mississippi House seem to have come to a similar realization in the way they divvied up the expected proceeds. At first, they were going to divide the money between state and local governments, but then they decided just to put all the money in a state fund to repair highways and roads.

Sen. Clint Dixon, the sponsor of the Georgia legislation, predicted the state will bring in $100 million annually, but some supporters of the bill say that figure is too low. A comparison with Mississippi doesn’t suggest this. Mississippi, a state that has some experience with gambling revenues, plans to tax online gambling at 12 percent. Under the Georgia bill, online gambling in this state would be taxed at 20 percent. In addition, there would be a $100,000 fee just to apply for a license and a $1 million a year fee for licensees.

Given the difference in the size of the two states’ populations and the difference in how much they plan to tax, $100 million for Georgia sounds about right and, in fact, might be a little high.

So many states are moving to legalize sports betting, but they are getting hard to keep up with. When Alabama takes up a measure next week, the number will be approaching 40. This, unfortunately, does not guarantee that it’s a good idea.