Ohio Governor Mike DeWine is looking to go national with his plan to ban prop bets in order to preserve the integrity of sports.
Governor DeWine has previously voiced his opposition to prop bets for sports integrity reasons and on Thursday called on the Ohio Casino Control Commission (OCCC) to remove prop bets from the list of legal bets that Ohio’s licensed sportsbooks are authorized to offer.
His intervention follows an announcement from Major League Baseball that it has placed two Cleveland Guardians pitchers on leave while it conducts a sports betting investigation.
Governor DeWine believes that prop bets on highly specific events within games that are completely controlled by one player are a problem for the integrity of all sports.
“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,’” said Governor DeWine.
“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.”
And in a move to take the ban nationwide, Governor DeWine said that he will be asking the commissioners and players unions of the six major sports leagues in the United States – MLB, the National Football League, the National Basketball Association, the Women’s National Basketball Association, the National Hockey League, and Major League Soccer – to support his effort to ban prop betting to ensure the integrity of their leagues.