Harlow’s Casino Resort & Spa opened up its new Sportsbook on Friday morning and its now open for customers to come in, place a bet, watch the game and enjoy plenty of food and beverages.
The new Sportsbook, which was previously a restaurant, has many additions that sports wagers may be looking for including:
• A 12-screen video wall with over 96 square feet of sports action
• Seventeen big screen TVs capable of showing a different game on each screen
• 23 of the newest sports betting kiosks open 24 hours a day
• Comfortable indivdual chair and lounging seating
“This gives a place for people to congregate and watch the big game, whatever the big game is,” said Barrett DeFay, Harlow’s director of marketing. “Maybe it’s for a Sunday Night Football game or a Green Bay against Dallas game at noon. Now, at least we can have everybody come together in one place. It’s friendly, watchable. They can sit with their friends and have a great time.”
Harlow’s took its first sports wager five years ago, and casino officials have been working on improving the customer for quite some time. Tommy Gibson, the director of gaming operations at Harlow’s, said he and his staff visited a number of sportsbooks around the region to find out what works best.
This is something we have wanted we to do for a while we just didn’t have enough space,” Gibson said. “When we moved the restaurant, it gave us a chance to have the space we needed. This sportsbook is a conglomeration of a lot of people’s ideas.”
Mississippi was one of the first states that allowed sports betting five years ago, but unlike most of its surrounding states, Mississippi does not allow betting with your mobile devise.
“We have been stuck the last five years, and now the competition in Tennessee, Arkansas and Louisiana all allow mobile sports betting. We are hoping the Mississippi legislature will pass mobile sports betting next year,” DeFay said.
Last March, the Mississippi Legislature passed a bill that would create a Mobile Sports Betting Task Force to study the issue.
Currently in order to place sports bets from a mobile phone in Mississippi gamblers must be on casino property.
