If Gov. Mike DeWine wants to cause mass annoyance and panic among Buckeye State sports gamblers, his proposal to outlaw all prop betting in Ohio should certainly do the trick.
- Governor DeWine’s call to ban all prop betting in Ohio is excessive, especially since current concerns appear to stem from an unfinished MLB investigation.
- Banning prop bets could severely impact Ohio's legal betting market, possibly eliminating up to 50% of betting volume, reducing tax revenue, and driving bettors to unregulated offshore markets—undermining the very integrity and transparency the governor wants to protect.
- Prop betting existed long before legalization and is deeply embedded in U.S. sports culture. Instead of a full ban, targeted regulation (as seen with NCAA player prop bans) could better balance integrity concerns while maintaining a viable, attractive legal market.
DeWine, in calling on the Ohio Casino Control Commission to prohibit “prop bets” — a broad term that suggests a possible ban on anything from anytime touchdown scorers to alternative point spreads — is reaching for a bazooka when a peashooter would suffice.
And, even then, I’m sure there are people who beg to differ.
“The harm to athletes and the integrity of the game is clear, and the benefits are not worth the harm,” DeWine declared in a press release Thursday. “The prop betting experiment in this country has failed badly.”
Look, legalized and regulated sports betting isn’t perfect. Nor is prop betting. But banning all prop betting is overkill, especially for a state that's let adult residents bet props for more than two years.
Ohio is one of the bigger and more competitive markets for legal U.S. sports betting. Bettors wagered approximately $586.3 million in the state with licensed sportsbooks in June alone, which translated into around $15 million in tax revenue.
How much of that flowed from just “prop bets” is hard to say, because Ohio sports betting figures aren't broken down that way. If I had to guess, though, I’d say it was a lot. Last March, analysts at one investment bank said prop betting in the U.S. accounted for “nearly half of bets across all sports in recent quarters.”
There’s no reason to believe prop betting became any less popular since then. And if it’s only half true, that still means DeWine’s proposed prop wagering ban could wipe out 25% of what Ohioans want to bet.
(Under Ohio's regulations, a "proposition bet" is defined as "a wager on a sporting event that is based on whether an identified instance or statistical achievement will occur, will be achieved, or will be surpassed, other than the score or outcome of the sporting event or parts of the sporting event, such as quarters, halves, periods, or innings.)
We got both kinds, country and western!
So, let’s be blunt: DeWine’s prop ban would make Ohio sports betting very boring.
You’d have moneylines, you’d have totals, you’d have point spreads. And... that’s it? Your same-game parlays would be… two legs? Three?
Maybe this is a world some bettors want to live in. I’m willing to wager the majority, raised in the age of player-centric fantasy sports and the preposterous-legged SGP, do not.
Banning all prop bets would therefore be bad for the bettors because it would deprive them of something they like and would still want. They'll try to find that same kind of sports betting elsewhere, and very well could find it.
When that happens, Ohio would have no clue what’s being wagered upon and in what amounts unless someone is generous enough to clue in state regulators and lawmakers. Some of that betting could even be by the type of bad actors the governor's worried about now. Ohio isn’t an island; Curaçao is.
“At the end of the day, bettors will find a way to wager on events and players, and we believe the effort to ban individual player betting will likely only push players back offshore, while we estimate over 50% of wagers today are in the United States,” analysts for what was then Citizens JMP Securities wrote in March 2024, which was in response to college player prop bans.
That is the hard-to-quantify thing to remember here. People in Ohio were betting on sports, including a wide variety of props, well before legalized sports wagering began in Ohio in early 2023.
In Jan. 2023, the first month of legalized sports gaming in Ohio, bettors wagered more than $1 billion in the Buckeye State with licensed operators. Did first-timers place all those bets?
Furthermore, in March of this year, NEXT.io and research firm Blask released a report on the "black market" of North American betting.
In Ohio, the report found, the top five wagering brands were four state-licensed operators (FanDuel, DraftKings, bet365, and ESPN BET) and then Bovada, which isn't authorized by Ohio regulators at all. This was two years after Ohio launched legal sports betting. Bovada has a lot of props.
Food for thought as Ohio's governor calls for a total ban on sports betting props: in March, a Blask/NEXT.io report found that one of the biggest betting brands in OH was still Bovada (they have lots of props).
— Geoff Zochodne (@GeoffZochodne) August 1, 2025
Offshores also appeared in the top 5 for other regulated states. pic.twitter.com/gVYRTGvEcl
Removing all props from legal sportsbooks in Ohio now would be a huge incentive for old and new bettors to head offshore, or even just outside the state. Because what is the “prop betting experiment” in the U.S., really? Was it sportsbook operators inventing prop betting? No, because prop betting existed before 2023, when Ohio launched legal sports betting, and before 2018, when the U.S. Supreme Court opened the door to widespread legalization.
Is the “experiment” the rise of certain props that the governor doesn't like? If that’s the case, then, let’s refine this request, make it more targeted, so Ohio sports betting doesn’t repel the very bettors it wanted to better protect.
In New Jersey, for instance, one lawmaker wants to outlaw microbetting, which could be what DeWine's biggest concern is here. Some people still won't like it, but they'll like ZERO PROPS a lot less.
A New Jersey lawmaker is proposing to prohibit sportsbook operators from offering microbetting in the state, something that could be of particular concern to a company like DraftKings, which purchased microbetting tech provider Simplebet last year. pic.twitter.com/HLc7CDqekZ
— Geoff Zochodne (@GeoffZochodne) July 25, 2025
Consider this as well: when the NCAA came knocking in 2024, concerned about college player props, the Ohio Casino Control Commission determined approximately 1.35% of legal sports wagering in Ohio was college player prop betting. The commission then decided to ban college player prop betting.
“Given the relative small percentage of wagers placed on player-specific prop bets, I perceive the risk of a black market boom to be low,” wrote Matthew Schuler, OCCC executive director, in Feb. 2024. “The NCAA has shown good cause to support its request to prohibit player-specific prop bets on NCAA collegiate events in Ohio. While I recognize that there may be a small negative impact to operator and tax revenue, the protection of student-athletes and the integrity of collegiate competitions far outweigh these impacts.”
At 1.35% of all bets, the risk of driving Ohioans to offshore sportsbooks was low, but not non-existent. So what if the percentage of forbidden bets is now 5% of all legal wagering? Or 10%? Or 50%? That’s what prop betting could amount to in Ohio. Is it possible to show “good cause” then?
“Good cause,” Schuler wrote, “is measured by whether the NCAA’s request, if adopted, will ensure the integrity of sports gaming or will be in the best interests of the public.”
How 'good' is this 'cause', exactly?
Is the integrity of sports betting ensured if that gaming is suddenly terrible and no one wants to use it? Is it ensured if a huge chunk of what people want to bet on is suddenly yanked away from them, nudging them toward bookmakers that pay no mind to Ohio’s wishes and pay no tax to the state whatsoever? Is it in the public's best interests to give them a sports betting product that sucks and that drives them into the arms of these operators?
The Ohio Casino Control Commission has yet to make a decision on DeWine's proposed prop ban.
"The Ohio Casino Control Commission (the 'Commission') works closely with Governor DeWine’s Office and General Assembly in serving the citizens of Ohio and protecting the integrity of gaming in the State," said Emily Berner, assistant general counsel for the commission, in an email to Covers on Friday. "To that end, staff is gathering information for the Commission to consider. The Commission will announce its next steps in the upcoming days."
Some of the information gathered could concern the money the state is currently getting from prop betting. Schuler notably factored “operator and tax revenue” into his conclusion on college player props. Ultimately, any hit from a college player prop ban, he determined, was negligible.
Wiping out props entirely will likely produce a much more pronounced hit to operator and tax revenue. I’m also old enough to remember the governor earlier this year wanted to double the state’s tax rate for sportsbook operators, again, to help pay for professional sports venues.
The tax revenue DeWine wanted then (but ultimately didn't get) would have been produced with the help of the same props he now wants to ban. It would have been much harder to generate that income without props.
Last year’s college player prop ban in Ohio was also at the NCAA's request. Is any professional league insisting on a complete prop betting ban in Ohio?
It doesn't look like it. DeWine said Thursday he'll ask the commissioners and players’ unions to back him in his effort “to ensure the integrity of their leagues.”
Gov. knows best?
Thus far, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred only hinted he’s got some concerns about “certain types of bets,” possibly first-pitch props and things of that nature.
"I know there was a lot of sports betting, tons of it that went on illegally, and we had no idea, no idea what threats there were to the integrity of the play because it was all not transparent," Manfred reportedly said at this year’s All-Star Game. "I firmly believe that the transparency and monitoring that we have in place now, as a result of the legalization and the partnerships that we've made, puts us in a better position to protect baseball than we were in before."
Let’s go back for a second to what appears to have prompted DeWine’s proposed prop ban. Thursday’s announcement by the governor looks like it was triggered by the situation with two Cleveland Guardians' pitchers who were placed on leave amid a Major League Baseball sports betting-related investigation.
“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,’” DeWine said in his press release.
The two Guardians are actually on "non-disciplinary paid leave" amid MLB's probe. So, is it fair to say that, technically, they haven’t been disciplined and they’re still being paid? Furthermore, the Guardians said on July 28 that they'd been informed "that no additional players or Club personnel are expected to be impacted."
— Cleveland Guardians (@CleGuardians) July 28, 2025
So, the casus belli for nuking prop betting could be an unfinished investigation involving perhaps no more than two as-yet unpunished players.
There may very well be some damning facts that come out and harsh discipline handed down and lots of shady characters and doings dragged into the light. But… they haven’t yet, have they?
Debate me!
Purely for the sake of argument, let’s say MLB announces tomorrow there’s nothing to see, no wrongdoing, everybody back on the diamond. Is the “harm” to the integrity of the game suddenly unclear? Would a prop betting ban then be warranted?
Let’s keep arguing, though. Maybe some truly damning stuff comes to light. And, in addition to that, you can point to the steady drip of sports betting-related scandals for examples needed to try to justify a total prop betting ban. Hello, Jontay Porter!
But when Porter et al were snared by the regulated sports betting system, was the response to ban every single prop on the board? Nope, it was more targeted, aimed at the more vulnerable and volatile parts of the sport. So there’s a precedent for being reasonable.
The NBA was also supportive of those changes from sportsbook operators. The NCAA wants college player prop bans. Is cancelling “Dinger Tuesday” what MLB wants? It sounds like Rob Manfred is pretty happy with where we are!
Yet it’s also possible DeWine cares not for what the leagues themselves want, given their business relationships now with sportsbook operators. Maybe he believes he’s just doing what's best here. And that’s fair.
Which brings us back to the rub of regulated sports betting, which is that it illuminates suspicious wagering, but provides more opportunity to wager and offers the types of betting markets where suspicious wagering can occur.
We can argue about this all day long, but, again, it’s not quite the chicken-or-the-egg quandary for Ohio.
Deep breath, everyone
The type of betting that has DeWine concerned (which, again, is ALL props, pending further clarification) was around before the Buckeye State legalized sports wagering and before PASPA fell in 2018.
Now, at least, Ohio sports betting regulators have an opportunity to get their arms around the size of that action, and state lawmakers can adjust it as they see fit.
In fact, according to ESPN, the current Cleveland-related quandary was touched off by betting-integrity firm IC360 sending alerts to sportsbooks in June flagging bets placed in New Jersey, New York, and… Ohio.
Ohio and others now have the tools to collect the information they need to go after wrongdoers. And when they find wrongdoing, they can punish it. Legalized sports betting is still young in most of the U.S., and there'll still be growing pains and lessons learned and mistakes made, including by the people who are the subject of that betting.
So, Ohio is within its rights and capabilities to ban prop betting. That's what legal sports betting offers.
But does it make sense to ban prop betting in Ohio? There’s just not as much “good cause” as there would be for something less drastic.
