Review Of Treasure Bay Casino Resort Sportsbook
Not every gaming spot on the Biloxi Strip has to be a nonstop headline grabber to be a great location for plenty of gambling excitement. Case in point, the Treasure Bay Casino and Hotel: this site of one of Mississippi’s many sportsbook operations offers a clean, casual, comfortable, laid back take on the whole casino thing, which makes it a fine addition to the growing sportsbook scene in the Magnolia State. Locals and visitors alike love places like this for their low key approach, which is why our review of the Treasure Bay Casino and Hotel sportsbook is meant to teach readers about a few of the hidden gems that the venue offers. Although legal sports betting in MS is still a relatively new concept, early impressions indicate this might end up being one of the best Mississippi sportsbooks around.
Our review of the Treasure Bay Casino and Hotel sportsbooks includes several pertinent questions that are liable to be on the mind of any sports bettor, no matter whether you are a veteran player or a newcomer to this exciting – and profitable – hobby. We will take a closer look at the opening date for the Treasure Bay sportsbook as well as the types of betting lines and the kinds of sporting events you will see represented on the betting boards. Additionally, we will answer two very pressing concerns: the situation relating to mobile sports betting apps and where you are legally allowed to use them in the state of Mississippi, and the state’s stance on proxy betting services which may be of interest for a lot of out of state players.
The Treasure Bay Casino Sportsbook first started accepting sports bets on August 24th, 2018. All of this was made possible by two important events; the US Supreme Court decided via majority decision in May of 2018 to overturn the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 (PASPA), while the Mississippi state legislature passed an amended sports betting law that legalized the gambling activity back during the 2017 legislative session. With no federal or state-level barriers, Mississippi sports betting has been big business ever since the SCOTUS decision.
The state-of-the-art sportsbook is operated by William Hill, one of the largest bookmakers in the nation. If you want to visit the venue, just go to the first floor of the casino near The Den. There you will find a multitude of widescreen televisions, huge odds boards, and plenty of comfortable seating. We wanted to make sure that we included hours of operation in our Treasure Bay Sportsbook review, which you can find listed below:
- Monday through Friday 10am to midnight
- Saturday & Sunday 8am to midnight
Of course, another common question that we get is if offshore books like Bovada are still taking residents now that Mississippi sportsbooks are open. Sports enthusiasts looking to get in on the action of wagering on a wider variety of teams and players can still head on over to a legal offshore sports betting site like Bovada, BetOnline, SportsBetting, BetDSI or 5Dimes. These sites serve US players in most states – and the Magnolia State is definitely one of those – without breaking any federal or state laws, so feel free to place your wagers at any of those most highly recommended overseas online betting shops with confidence when you can’t make it to Treasure Bay.
One of the most commonly used terms you will run into if you hang around the sports betting scene for long enough is “full service betting.” But just what does full service mean? Well, the quick version is that a full service sportsbook is one that offers action on most – if not all – professional and collegiate sports, and also offer a wide variety of betting lines, moneylines to spreads to against the spread odds (ATS), totals betting odds (those are also often referred to over/unders a lot of the time on betting boards). You will also find that full service betting options like those offered by the Treasure Bay Casino and Hotel Sportsbook include special betting lines in the event of some truly big time sporting events or those that draw a substantially high amount of attention from the public, plenty of proposition bets specific to individual players or including the performances of the entire team (or teams).
Another major component that goes into the “full service” designation is the fact that sportsbooks will make sure to list betting lines for as many major sports – professional and collegiate – as possible so that bettors are not left out with fewer choices. Fortunately, Mississippi’s state sports betting legalization law allows betting on all professional sports (including the main four – those being the NBA, MLB, NBA and NHL) along with auto racing series such as NASCAR and the Formula 1 Championship, boxing and mixed martial arts competitions and even Major League Soccer along with World Cup action. What’s more, college sports are well represented too, especially college football, which is practically a cultural institution unto itself in the South and especially so in Mississippi. Olympics betting odds will also be offered during the times when the Summer and Winter Games are being held.
That doesn’t even get into futures odds on things like season championships, teasers, pleasers and other betting subtypes that hardcore sports bettors are more likely to enjoy that newbies. Whatever the case may be, rest assured they are all going to be available when you go to place bets at the new sportsbook. Be sure to check out the Treasure Bay website for more details about the types of bets offered by the bookies there.
Among the very few perceived downsides to the sports betting legalization and regulatory laws passed by the state of Mississippi was an apparent disregard for an overly expansive provision enabling sportsbooks like the one at the Treasure Bay Casino and Hotel to offer mobile sports betting. While it has to be said that you can place sports betting using your mobile device at the Treasure Bay, the Magnolia State’s laws on the subject do not permit guests at the combination hotel and casino or customers of the sportsbooks in the state to use mobile betting apps outside of the main gaming spaces of the facilities at which the state’s newly minted sportsbooks are actually housed. What that means in practical terms is that you will not be able to use a mobile app to bet on sports at any of the active or forthcoming Mississippi sportsbooks if you are outside the main building – say, for instance if you were in the parking lot or parking garage.
While it might seem unfortunate on the face of it – and it is a bit of a letdown – one has to consider that limiting the exposure for mobile sports betting at the onset of the legal Mississippi sports betting industry was a carefully weighed decision by the legislators in the statehouse at Jackson. Mississippi is a deeply socially conservative state that nevertheless is pursuing a gambling expansion to include sports betting for the obvious economic benefit afforded by legalizing, regulating and taxing the activity. However, lawmakers wanted to prevent creating tomorrow’s problem gamblers or even sports betting addicts by making sure that underage players would not be able to have access to mobile sports betting that can take place outside a casino. All in all it is not a bad call, especially since it helped the Magnolia State to pass its own brand of sports betting reform as far back as the legislative session of 2017 without all the fuss that other states around the country had to go through in 2018 prior to the SCOTUS decision to overturn PASPA.
Proxy betting is one of the more controversial topics in sports betting circles in the American context. That is because proxy betting services are, in essence, business that attempt to offer a means by which players in one state can bet on sports in another state, and that seems to toe the line on legality, at least as far as the Federal Wire Act of 1961 is concerned. That longstanding piece of federal legislation, which is still in effect today some half century after its original passage, basically makes it illegal for a gambling business or facilitator to accept wagers or even information relating to wagers by way of any wired communications system – so that means no phone, no internet, and – heck – not even a telegraph.
For the purposes of our review of the Treasure Bay Casino and Hotel sportsbook, we cannot recommend that our readers engage the services of a proxy betting business because any such business operating without the express legal authorization of the state of Mississippi may be violating federal law. For now, there is no word from the Magnolia State’s sports betting regulatory authorities on the matter, so we advise you to steer clear of proxy betting services for the time being. With the arrival of the first legal Mississippi sportsbooks probably ever in history, it simply is not worth the risk of running into trouble with the law. Just take a drive over to Biloxi and enjoy the sports betting action in person.