As Mississippi lawmakers are set to again consider legalizing mobile sports betting, the University of Mississippi has completed a new study offering a snapshot of the gambling habits of college students across the state. 

The survey — for which results were shared with Mississippi Today before publication — of nearly 1,600 Mississippi college students shows that almost 60% of students who reported gambling in the last year said they placed online bets on “legal” sportsbooks.

This indicates that a potentially large number of students are finding ways to place bets on legitimate platforms, not just illicit betting sites, even though mobile sports betting remains illegal in Mississippi, according to one of the study’s coauthors.    

“Our students are showing similar patterns to those identified by the NCAA and seen nationally, including that legality doesn’t make a difference with college students,” said Dan Durkin, an associate professor of social work.

The survey did not ask about the use of illicit betting platforms because most students either don’t know or don’t care whether or not the practice is illegal, Durkin said. The researchers plan to create a variable before publication that reflects illegality, he added.

College campuses have become hubs of activity for sports betting and, increasingly, gambling addiction. This has prompted calls for research into mobile sports betting’s growth and impact on young adults. 

As more states began to legalize online betting and concern over addition grew, the NCAA surveyed students and found that many young adults were wagering on sports despite age, geographic and legal restrictions on betting. 

Mobile sports betting statewide has remained illegal in Mississippi, largely due to fears that legalization could harm the bottom line of the state’s casinos and increase gambling addiction. In 2024, illegal online betting in Mississippi made up about 5% of the national illegal market, which is about $3 billion in illegal bets in Mississippi, proponents said that year. 

The new University of Mississippi study, conducted by Durkin, Hannah Allen, Nicholas McAfee, George McClellan and Ronald Rychlak in conjunction with the University of Mississippi’s William Magee Institute for Student Wellbeing, also found that 32% of students reported using family members or friends to place bets over the past year. About 18% reported placing bets in person at casinos, 15% bet online through a sportsbook outside the U.S. or Canada and another 15% place bets with illegal bookies. 

Mississippi residents have placed, according to some analysts, billions of dollars in online sports bets through illicit offshore betting platforms. But the new survey results show that young people in Mississippi have found a way to place online bets on legitimate platforms as well. They might be doing this by using tools such as virtual private networks, or VPNs, to access betting sites. 

Some students told Durkin that their peers learned how to use VPNs after Mississippi enacted a law in 2023 requiring age verification for pornographic sites, prompting some pornography companies to block access to their sites in the state. 

There are just under 80,000 students enrolled at Mississippi’s eight public universities and the University of Mississippi Medical Center. That translates to somewhere between 4,700 and 6,400 Mississippi students facing serious gambling issues currently, Durkin said, using a range of state and national estimates on gambling-related “harm.” This can include psychological distress, debt, and dips in academic performance. 

Of those, 20%–30% may eventually develop a gambling disorder, though gambling disorders can often take time to develop, Durkin said. Those are his estimates, not figures included in the survey.

In the survey, a majority of students who bet on sports had no or a low risk for “problem gambling,” but 10% had a moderate risk for problem gambling, and 6% met criteria for problem gambling.       

The survey looked at gambling across the board. About 39% of students gambled in the past year, with lottery (18%), card games (17%), and sports betting (16%) as the most prevalent types of gambling. Gambling was more prevalent among students who were male, white, lived off campus, participated in athletics, were involved in Greek life and had higher GPAs, the survey found.  

READ MORE: ‘A casino in every pocket’: Mississippi illegal online sports betting thrives as legalization stalls

Zooming in on sports betting, the most prevalent way to bet was online through a sportsbook. 

The most common sports to bet on were the NFL football (62%), college football (53%), college men’s basketball (48%), and NBA basketball (46%). Typical monthly spending ranged from $0-$6,000, with an average of about $100 per month. 

Favorable regulatory and technological shifts have led to rapid growth for the U.S. online gambling market in recent years. But the industry continues to be undercut by illegal operators. Online gross gaming revenue in the U.S. topped $90 billion in 2024, $67 billion of which went to unlicensed players, according to research commissioned by the Campaign for Fairer Gambling, a group that lobbies against illegal gambling.

Changing state regulations have kicked off a lobbying blitz in states such as Mississippi. 

The Mississippi House in 2023, 2024 and 2025 passed legislation legalizing online betting, but it has died in the Senate.

Some form of sports betting is legal in 40 states, though only 20 have full online betting with multiple operators, according to Action Network, a sports betting application and news site. Some states have only in-person betting, and some only have a single online operator. Mississippi permits sports betting, but it only allows bets made in person at casinos or bets made with apps on mobile devices while inside casinos. 

Mississippi House Speaker Jason White, a Republican, has been one of the state’s most vocal proponents of mobile sports betting. He has indicated that his caucus will again push to legalize online betting during the 2026 legislative session.

Durkin said if Mississippi does legalize online betting, the legislation should include funding for addiction treatment paid for with a tax on gambling companies. Several states, such as Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee, allocate tax revenues collected through gambling to addiction resources.  

“They should consider modelling our state after what other states have done and include in their legislation money to attend to these problems,” Durkin said. “They need to tax the people who are causing the problems to fund fixing them.”