MIAMI COUNTY — Since it became legal at the start of 2023, sports betting has become big business in the Buckeye State.
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“Some people love it for the thrill of it, I think. But personally, I don’t really care about it because I like to keep my money,” Harrison Cameron, University of Dayton freshman, said.
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Dr. Jared Pincin is an associate director of economics at Cedarville University.
He studies two areas of sports gambling: revenue impacts for states that have legalized it and how it impacts college-age students.
A group of Ohio lawmakers has announced a new plan at the statehouse in Columbus aimed at changing legal sports gambling in our state.
Miami Valley State Rep. Johnathan Newman is a joint sponsor on one of two bills lawmakers are currently drafting.
The bills would, among other changes, if they become law, include limits on how much and how often people could bet daily, would not allow people to place wagers using credit cards, and would impact where people could place bets.
They’d have to be made in person at casinos or at sportsbooks, instead of on phones.
It would ban prop bets, wagers on specific events or stats in a game that are not directly tied to the final score, and ban betting on college sports.
Pincin said if the plans become law, some policy changes would be easier to make than others.
Like limiting certain types of bets, he said, not too difficult.
But eliminating online betting and the revenue stream that comes with it, Pincin said, would be more difficult.
“The biggest problem with that from getting it passed is that it is essentially all of Ohio’s sports gambling. When you look at the numbers, it’s close to 99% of all wagers are online,” Pincin said.
Newman said Wednesday they’re still hammering out some of the details in the bills and that they’re on track to introduce them sometime in Mid-May.
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