Mississippi: House Speaker, staff treated to Super Bowl by gambling giant pushing for legalized betting

Wednesday, April 23, 2025 3:13 PM
Image aggregated from Mississippi Today.
  • Michael Goldberg and Taylor Vance, Mississippi Today

The sports gambling lobby, as it has done in other states, has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on Mississippi politicians trying to convince them to legalize mobile sports betting.

Part of that effort was an unreported trip to the Super Bowl in New Orleans this year for House Speaker Jason White, his staff and a couple of their spouses. The trip was paid for, at least in part, by DraftKings, one of the nation’s highest-grossing gaming companies that has invested heavily in lobbying for legal online betting.

Thanks to a loophole in Mississippi’s lax lobbying laws, there is no public report to date of the expensive weekend in lobbying reports that are supposed to document spending on behalf of state employees.