Casinos: Commercial Casinos - Mississippi

Gambling along the Mississippi River and its connecting waterways was widespread during the early 1800s. The rivers were the modern-day equivalent of the interstate highway system, carrying cash-laden farmers, merchants, and tourists to bustling towns along the riverbank. Many of these towns developed gambling halls, notorious establishments that attracted many professional gamblers. These sharps, chiefly cardsharps, soon had an unsavory reputation for cheating visitors out of their money.

By the 1830s the cardsharps had worn out their welcome in riverbank towns. According to Richard Dunstan in Gambling in California (Sacramento, CA: California Research Bureau, 1997), five cardsharps were lynched in Mississippi in 1835, and the professional gamblers moved to the riverboats cruising up and down the rivers. Gambling between riverboat passengers was a popular pastime during the 1840s and 1850s. The onset of the Civil War (1861–65) and then the antigambling movement around the turn of the twentieth century dampened, but did not destroy, open gambling in the state.

During and after World War II (1939–45), the Mississippi coast experienced a resurgence in illegal casino gambling, particularly in Harrison County, home of the city of Biloxi and Keesler Air Force Base. The officers' club at the base is reputed to have openly operated slot machines. During the 1960s the Alcohol Beverage Control Board began refusing licenses to public facilities allowing gambling. A few private clubs and lodges continued to offer card games and slot machines, but they were eventually shut down by the mid-1980s.

In 1987 the ship Europa Star and several other ships from Biloxi ports began taking gamblers on "cruises to nowhere"—cruises to international waters in the Gulf of Mexico where onboard gambling could take place legally. Although supported by the city of Biloxi, the state initially opposed these cruises until it became apparent that they were reviving tourism in port towns. The state was in desperate economic times, having been proclaimed the poorest state in the country by the 1980 census. In 1989 Mississippi became the first state to permit cruises to conduct gambling in state waters when the ships were on their way to or from international waters.

Dockside casino gambling was legalized by the Mississippi legislature in 1990 with passage of House Bill 2. The bill established the Mississippi Gaming Control Act and the three-commissioner Mississippi Gaming Commission to regulate dockside casinos and charitable gaming. Each parish (county) was allowed to decide whether it would allow gambling. Fourteen parishes along the Gulf Coast and Mississippi River held referendums regarding dockside casinos, and all voted them down. The next year, a city-by-city vote was held, and voters in Biloxi, which was nearly bankrupt at the time, approved the referendum. In 1992 nine dockside casinos opened in Biloxi.

There are three major casino regions in the state: the northern region centered in Tunica, the central region based in Vicksburg and Natchez, and the coastal region centered in Biloxi, Gulfport, and Bay St. Louis. According to the AGA the casino markets in Tunica and Biloxi were ranked among the top ten markets in the country during 2002.

Mississippi has not set a limit on the number of casinos that can be built in the state, instead allowing competition to determine the market size. By law, casinos must be permanently docked in the water along the Mississippi River and the Mississippi Gulf Coast. The gambling halls of the casinos actually sit on the water, while their associated lodging, dining, and entertainment facilities are on land. Along the Mississippi River, the gambling halls sit in slips cut into the riverbank. The Choctaw Indians operate the only land-based casinos in the state.

As of March 2004 there were twenty-nine commercial casinos operating in Mississippi. (See Table 4.3.) In total, they employed 28,794 people and offered nearly 1.5 million square feet of gaming space, nearly 40,000 slot machines, more than one thousand table games, and one hundred poker games. Games offered include blackjack, craps, roulette, baccarat, mini-baccarat, big six wheel, keno, and various forms of poker and other card games. The state allows round-the-clock gambling with no bet limits. Gross casino revenue for the state was $2.7 billion in calendar year 2003, virtually unchanged from 2002. (See Figure 4.2.) In fact, commercial casino revenue leveled off during the early twenty-first century after growing steadily through the 1990s. The casinos had more than 14,000 hotel rooms and received nearly fifty-four million visitors during 2003.

According to statistics provided by the Mississippi Gaming Commission, the casino industry produces 10% of the state's annual budget, generating in excess of $300 million in wagering, sales, and income taxes. For fiscal year 2004 (July 2003–June 2004), casinos paid $332 million in taxes; half went to the state's general fund, one-third went to local governments, and the remainder went into the Bond Sinking Fund and Highway Fund. In total, $2 billion was collected in casino taxes in Mississippi between July 1992 and June 2004.