The Vinton, Louisiana Welcome Center has become a hotbed for sports bettors. No, there’s not a bookie there. No casino has yet to build a betting kiosk or open a traditional sportsbook at the spot.
This Welcome Center has become the de facto home of Texas cross-border sports betting.
This post is all about why.
If you read between the lines, you’ll understand why I’m more interested in sports betting instead of slot machines, too.
Why Texans are Driving to Place Sports Bets
Vinton’s Louisiana Welcome Center is located less than a mile from the Texas-Louisiana border. It’s on I-10, one of the major interstate highways of the south. It’s set amid the swampy waters of Lost Lake and the Sabine River delta. And it’s been home to hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of sports betting.
The explanation is simple. Legal and regulated mobile sports betting is now a thing in Louisiana. Mobile sports betting isn’t legal in Texas. Louisiana’s population is about 1/7th that of Texas, and the two states couldn’t be more different in terms of average income. (You can find out more about legalities of gambling here.)
In short, Texas has all the expendable income while Louisiana has all the access.
This welcome center is within 200 miles of millions of people from both states. It’s no surprise that a significant chunk of those people wants to place legal sports wagers.
You can stop, grab a cold soft drink, place legal (safe and regulated) sports bets on your phone, and then head right back home.
That’s how a little nondescript welcome center becomes the hub of a regional sports betting industry.
Mattress Mack – Texas’ Most Famous Cross-Border Sports Bettor
Houston’s most famous son – furniture magnate Jim McIngvale, better known as Mattress Mack -probably set some kind of record on his recent mobile sports betting trip to Louisiana. He reportedly wagered $9.5 million on the 2022 Super Bowl from his phone in the parking lot of the welcome center.
Mack is said to have split this money among several mobile sportsbooks.
Mack backed the Bengals at +170. He lost, missing out on a payday of more than $16 million.
How does Mack afford it? Generally, he leverages his big headline bets with deals at his furniture store. He’ll offer people a certain amount of money back if the team he doesn’t bet on wins. That way, he “wins” either way. Though I’m sure he’d rather have that clean $16 million payday over a stack of customer receipts.
My First Legal Louisiana Sports Bet
My house is 100 miles exactly from the welcome center in question. I decided to give it a try for myself.
I’m a baseball fan. I know that the baseball market is relatively beatable. My plan was to head over the border, open an account at Caesars, place a simple baseball bet, then head right back home to wait it out.
The trip east on I-10 is a bit dreary, but my heart started to pick up speed when I saw the first Welcome to Louisiana sign.
As I pulled into the welcome center on a Friday afternoon, the sports betting traffic was already visible. In fact, it looked to me like the welcome center itself was encouraging this behavior. They’d put up signs in an extended lot indicating that it was for “customers using cell service.” Reminds me a lot of the cell phone parking lots at big airports around the country.
I decided to place a futures bet. I’ve got a big personal investment in the Astros’ Jeremy Peña, whose quick start and heroic play in the field (plus a healthy 9-spot of early season homeruns) has put him in the running for American League Rookie of the Year.
Once I loaded up Caesars and opened my account, I found that they had Peña listed at +300. There’s some value in that number. Sure, Pena has a major rival in the Mariners’ phenom Julio Rodriguez. But I just don’t see J-Rod at even money, the way Caesars had him the day of my foray into Louisiana.
At +300, my $100 bet on Peña to win the AL RotY would pay me back an extra $300. I still can’t believe I got those kind of odds on a guy that many outlets seem to have already crowned Rookie of the Year.
Conclusion
If you live anywhere near the Louisiana border and want to place a legal sports bet, it’s really easy. Once you get into Louisiana proper, mobile sportsbook apps will recognize that you’re in an area where it’s legal to place a bet. You can proceed as though you were a native-born Louisianan.
Check out the Vinton, Louisiana Welcome Center while you’re at it. It’s really close to the border. It has clean restrooms, cold beverages, and a ton of other sports bettors pecking away at their phones.
