Ohio Governor Mike DeWine has called for a total ban on prop betting following a ban on college player props last year at the behest of NCAA president Charlie Baker. Now, DeWine is proposing that sportsbooks be prohibited from offering prop bets on professional athletes as well.
DeWine Looks to End Player Props
Prop betting is big business in the world of sports betting. Customers can choose to bet on players to achieve, or fail to achieve, designated goals like passing yards, rushing yards, home runs, hits, scores, etc.
They can even wager on whether a pitcher will throw a ball or a strike on the next pitch, and recent controversy surrounding Cleveland Guardians’ pitchers Luis Ortiz and Emmanuel Clase caused Major League Baseball to execute a leave of absence for both pitchers due to unusual pitches that were flagged by an integrity company working for the league.
This prompted Governor DeWine to issue a press release stating, “The evidence that prop betting is harming athletics in Ohio is reaching critical mass. First, there were threats on Ohio athletes, and now two high-profile Ohio professional athletes have been suspended by Major League Baseball as part of a ‘sports betting investigation.’
“The harm to athletes and the integrity of the game is clear, and the benefits are not worth the harm. The prop betting experiment in this country has failed badly. I call on the Casino Control Commission to correct this problem and remove all prop bets from the Ohio marketplace.”
If DeWine is successful, player prop betting of any form will be banned in Ohio. He has also called on the commissioners of all the major sports to join him in these efforts. However, in mature markets like the United Kingdom, pre-game props and in-game betting could account for 50% or more of the handle for many online sportsbooks, and live betting is responsible for roughly 70% of the handle.
Prop-er Betting
Governor Mike DeWine certainly enjoys the revenues that mobile sportsbooks are contributing to the state’s coffers, but his actions have proven otherwise. A month after mobile sports betting was launched in the Buckeye State in January 2023, he proposed doubling the tax from 10% to 20%.
In July of that year, just six months after the industry launched, DeWine got his wish, and the effective tax rate on adjusted gross revenues became 20%, much to the chagrin of the sportsbooks. However, he went back to the same well this past session and proposed another doubling of the tax rate to 40% but this time was rebuffed by the legislature.
However, he did get his wish in eliminating college player prop bets in February 2024 when the Ohio Casino Control Commission eliminated college player props from the menu of all licensed sportsbooks operating in the state. Naturally, the fewer choices on the menu, the less revenue in the pockets of both the sports betting platforms and, by default, the state that taxes those revenues.
“The Ohio Casino Control Commission took quick action to protect student athletes from unnecessary and potentially harmful threats,” DeWine said back in 2024. “Amending rules to focus bets on the team and away from individual athletes will improve the marketplace in Ohio and properly focus betting attention on the teams and away from individual student athletes.”
