MIAMI COUNTY — A new bill that could change sports betting in Ohio is in the works.
[DOWNLOAD: Free WHIO-TV News app for alerts as news breaks]
As reported on News Center 7 at 6:00, State Representative Johnathan Newman (R-Troy) is one of the lawmakers behind this plan.
TRENDING STORIES:
- Hundreds evacuated after gas leak in downtown Columbus
- Truck crashes into area medical spa
- Investigation continues after skeletal remains found on vacant property in Preble County
His district includes parts of Darke County and all of Miami County.
If this plan becomes law, it will change several things about how people bet on sports in Ohio.
Since it became legal in Ohio a little more than three years ago, sports betting has become a big business.
“A lot of my friends do it. They always talk about what they’re going to pick next and everything,” Harrison Cameron, University of Dayton freshman, said.
“It’s just another version of like the casino or a scratch off. Honestly, it can be addicting, and it can ruin your life,” Aubrey Botts, of Dayton, said.
A group of Ohio lawmakers announced a new plan at the statehouse in Columbus this week. It’s aimed at changing legal sports gambling.
“We want to protect consumers, and we want to protect, let’s not forget, the games that we love. We want to protect the integrity of our games,” Newman said.
Newman is a joint sponsor on one of the two bills lawmakers are currently drafting.
If they become law, the bills would include limits on how much and how often people could bet daily.
It also wouldn’t allow people to place wagers using credit cards, and it would impact where people could place bets. They’d have to be made in person at casinos or sports books instead of on phones.
And it would ban prop bets, which are wagers on specific events or stats in a game that are not directly tied to the final score, and ban betting on college sports.
“In 2021, there was a new freeway built, a new freeway to gambling, and that freeway had no lines on it, no speed limits on it, no off-ramps, and so what we’re trying to do is provide some lines on the freeway. Some guardrails and some off-ramps and some speed limits to rein in some great harms that we see,” Newman said.
He said Thursday, they’re hammering out the final details in the language at the statehouse in Columbus.
These bills have not been introduced yet, so they have a long way to go, potentially becoming law here in Ohio.
He said they expect to introduce the bills within the next two weeks.
[SIGN UP: WHIO-TV Daily Headlines Newsletter]
©2026 Cox Media Group
