CLEVELAND — Three years ago at this time, Ohio was preparing to enter into the world of sports betting that would launch January 1, 2023, becoming the 32nd state to offer it. It also marked the state’s entry into mobile gambling, with sports betting on your phone, something that roughly 98 percent of bettors would eventually do. There was talk of expanding it, as other neighboring states had and would do to include iGaming.
Three years later, those talks have subsided, especially in the wake of two sports betting scandals involving Major League Baseball and the NBA that resulted in federal charges against players in both leagues with ties to Northeast Ohio — Guardians pitchers Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz, and NBA player Terry Rozier from Shaker Heights.
"It's been a very concerning month. Lots of different developments and threads running through it,” said Geoff Zochodne, Senior News Analyst at Covers.com. “Something that’s prompted a lot of thought from people who regulate this industry, who work in this industry, the leagues that interact with the industry and so you’re seeing a lot of sober seconds thought I guess you could say."
The major concern has been over micro prop bets, things like the first pitch balls at the center of the MLB investigation of Clase and Ortiz.
"These just need to go away,” said Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine after the NBA charges were announced, a stance he took this summer when the investigation began into Clase and Ortiz, and he called for a ban on them in Ohio but recognized the state couldn’t be alone on this. "Ohio could do it but it doesn't eliminate the problem."
He worked with Major League Baseball and applauded their announcement on November 10 to, effective immediately, work with the league’s Authorized Gaming Operators to cap wagers on pitch-level markets at $200 and exclude those bets from parlays. In a release, the league says, “These new measures — implemented across sportsbook operators representing more than 98% of the U.S. betting market — are intended to mitigate integrity risks, and maintain the transparency and data access benefits that the regulated sports betting market provides.”
It’s something Zochodne said the NFL had previously proactively done. "They have worked sort of behind the scenes with their sports betting partners to just take things off the wagering menu that they don't like that they think could pose concerns and securing those agreements and they think they've been pretty successful at that."
“Trying to curtail the kinds of prop bets that they think that could be particularly problematic, such as one that would involve an outcome that’s 100 percent controlled by one player, you know whether a quarterback’s first pass will be incomplete, whether the field goal the kicker is about to kick is going to miss, that kind of thing.”
The NBA scandal is getting the attention of Washington with the Senate Commerce Committee, including Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno, calling on NBA Commissioner Adam Silver to assure them the integrity of the sport is being protected.
“The depth of the scandal is pretty outrageous, the sophistication of it,” said Moreno. "The last thing we want is fans to not have confidence in the games that are played."
All of this part of the atmosphere that has put any idea of iGaming in Ohio on hold for now, said one of the iGaming bill sponsors Rep. Brian Stewart, R-Asheville. “It’s been pretty clear that there's not support within the caucus to have an expansion of gaming."
And while the leagues look at guardrails, the Ohio Senate President says maybe the state should take a closer look as well.
“I think we need to take a look at it whether it’s a joint House- Senate committee to make recommendations to the legislature about where the problems are,” said Senate President Matt Huffman last week. “Pandora’s Box has been opened, and we have lot’s of gambling that we didn’t have even 10 years ago.”
"When bad violent things start to happen is when it's out of control, so yeah, I think we need to look at it and see what needs to get undone possibly or get done,” Huffman said.
