On Thursday, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine called on the state’s Casino Control Commission to remove prop bets from the list of legal wagers in Ohio.
The request comes on the heels of the Cleveland Guardians gambling scandal, which placed pitchers Luis Ortiz and Emmanuel Clase on Major League Baseball’s Commissioner’s Exempt List due to an ongoing investigation into unusual betting activity on microbets involving both players.
In short, Ortiz and Clase are being accused of purposely throwing a ball on the first pitch of an inning to produce large payouts for inside prop bettors who knew about the fix.
“The evidence that prop betting is harming athletics in Ohio is reaching critical mass,” DeWine said in a statement Thursday afternoon. “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. 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.”
Right. It’s the sportsbooks’ fault that two MLB players couldn’t follow the golden rule and stay away from sports gambling.
As you could imagine, this statement was met with incredible pushback. Player prop bets are among the most popular and enticing ways for gamblers to bet on sports across the globe.
Sports betting went live in Ohio in January 2023 after a long, drawn-out process following its legalization in the state. Not long after, Ohio decided it would no longer allow wagering on prop bets for college sports, a restriction that’s common in 16 other states.
States like Illinois, Iowa and Connecticut ban users from betting on college prop bets involving in-state teams. Oregon has banned betting on college athletics altogether, including traditional markets and props.
Banning all prop bets, in college and professional sports, would be unprecedented. It would renege on the original legislation that Ohioans voted for to legalize sports betting.
DeWine has been out of touch on this subject for years. This is nothing new. Even before this story blew up, he spoke out against online casino gambling bills, which have been legalized in many states that also allow sports gambling.
This is such an easy scandal to solve. If the league has evidence against Clase and Ortiz—which it likely does, given both players have been suspended during the investigation—then they should be banned from baseball for life. There’s no reason to punish law-abiding citizens for the actions of two isolated bad actors.
Also, someone should remind DeWine that the suspicious activity surrounding Ortiz’s pitches took place in Ohio, New York and New Jersey. As a governor, you might want to have all the facts straight before releasing wild statements calling for sweeping action. This situation is embarrassing enough, and out of touch statements only magnify that.
Is DeWine going to pick up the phone and convince two of the country’s most mature sports betting states to ban player props too? Sounds unlikely.