Sports gambling still up for debate in Louisiana

Mississippi casinos in Biloxi and Tunica welcomed sports betting with great fanfare last week, The News Star reports.

“For the Southeast region, we’re it,” Mississippi Gaming Commissioner Jerry Griffith recently told the Sun-Herald. “It’s new. It’s exciting. It’s energizing. This is big time right here.”

So will Louisiana eventually break Mississippi’s monopoly in the southeastern U.S. by adding sports betting to its gaming industry inventory?

Lawmakers here rejected a bill during this year’s regular session that would have allowed sports betting in Louisiana contingent on the U.S. Supreme Court overturning a law that had previously banned it, which the court did in May.

“The legalization of sports gambling requires an important policy choice, but the choice is not ours to make,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the 6-3 majority. “Congress can regulate sports gambling directly, but if it elects not to do so, each state is free to act on its own.”

Sen. Danny Martiny, R-Metairie, who implored his colleagues to pass his bill to allow sports wagering, said Louisiana has fallen farther behind Mississippi.

Martiny had hoped to try again to get a bill passed for sports betting during the third special session of the year in June but Gov. John Bel Edwards didn’t include it as an option in the call for the session.

Edwards has said he will consider supporting legalized sports wagering, but added he didn’t want to include it in the June special session because he didn’t want to distract lawmakers from passing new taxes to address the state’s budget crisis.

Martiny says he’ll try again next spring, but he isn’t optimistic.

“I think at the very earliest it will be two-and-a-half to three years before we could get it up and running,” he says. “And even if we do it’s restricted by a limitation of (space) within the casinos.”
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