Mississippi Representative Bobby Moak's attempt to legalise online gambling House Bill 254 has failed at the committee stage, the same as it happened to his HB 1372 bill in 2012. The bill failed in committee after being double-referred to Gaming and Ways and Means this week.
A Democrat politician and a former chairman of the Legislature's House Gaming Committee, Moak proposed the bill 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. It would also protect land casinos from competition from new online-only gaming companies, which led many of the big casino operators to support the measure.
Churches and big casino companies in Mississippi met with opposition any effort to enact a state lottery or other major changes since the inception of legal land casino gaming in the 'nineties',
