Governor DeWine’s Regret Over Legalized Sports Betting

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine signed sports betting into law in the state in 2021. However, he now laments the legalization of the industry.

The Republican is expressing regret after seeing two Cleveland Guardians pitchers embroiled in a gambling-related scandal.

Since 2018, the sports betting industry has experienced rapid expansion following the Supreme Court’s overturning of PASPA. The governor believes that as a result of that expansion, gambling has become too easy and prevalent in society.

“Look, we’ve always had gambling, we’re always going to have gambling,” DeWine told the Associated Press last week. “But just the power of these companies and the deep, deep, deep pockets they have to advertise and do everything they can to get someone to place that bet is really different once you have legalization of them.”

Recent Betting Scandals Cause Opinion Shift

The change of heart comes after several recent scandals. In addition to the Guardians scandal, there similar ones involving NCAA and NBA athletes.

The NCAA is currently investigating players from several schools. The federal government also indicted NBA players and coaches for rigged poker and sports betting schemes.

Cleveland Guardians pitchers Luis Ortiz and Emmanuel Clase were arrested earlier this month. They both face fraud and conspiracy charges for rigging pitches to benefit prop bettors.

DeWine led the charge against these types of prop bets. Consequently, MLB reached an agreement with the league’s sports betting partners. Operators cap these types of wagers at $200 and prohibit bettors from using them in parlays.

“Gov. DeWine really did a huge service, I think — to us, certainly, I can’t speak for any of the other sports — in terms of kind of bringing forward the need to do something in this area,” MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said last week.

Since he influenced MLB, now DeWine is pushing other sports leagues to enact similar bets. He believes micro prop bets cause game integrity issues.

“It needs to be holistic, it needs to be universal,” he told the AP. “They’re just playing with fire. I mean, they are just asking for more and more trouble, their failure to address this.”

Cheaters Get Caught Because Of Regulation

Opponents argue that leagues have always had issues of corruption, but those went undetected because there was not a larger legal and regulated sports betting environment outside Las Vegas prior to 2018.

“For as long as organized sports have existed, officials and players have attempted to profit by exploiting insider information or fixing games to win large sums of money,” Reason magazine director of consumer freedom Guy Bentley noted recently.

Bentley point to historical examples of cheating, such as the 1978 Boston College point shaving scheme and the Black Sox game-fixing scandal that embroiled MLB during the 1919 World Series. He noted that betting scandals have always been part of sports and today’s regulated environment makes it easier to catch those involved.

“When scandals surface,” Bentley wrote, “it’s tempting to say sports betting legalization is creating more corruption rather than examining the possibility that more cheats are being caught because of legalization.”