Save Ohio Sports Act: The Bill That Would Ban Online Betting and Prop Bets
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A £7.9 Billion Market Under Threat in a Single State
Ohio is not a state most people associate with radical policy shifts. It legalized sports betting in January 2023, watched the market explode, and by 2025 its residents had wagered more than £8.1 billion on sporting events — with 98% of that volume flowing through online platforms. The state’s sportsbook operators generated over £0.79 billion in gross gaming revenue during the same period. Then, in April 2026, a group of Ohio legislators introduced the «Save Ohio Sports Act,» and everything about the state’s relationship with sports betting was suddenly on the table.
The bill proposes restrictions that would effectively dismantle Ohio’s online betting market. If passed as written, it would represent the most aggressive rollback of legal sports betting anywhere in the UK since PASPA was struck down in 2018. For MLB bettors, the implications are direct: Ohio is home to two major-league teams and has been at the center of the sport’s most prominent recent gambling scandals. What happens at Westminster could set a precedent that extends far beyond state lines.
What the Bill Proposes: Eight Bets per Day, £79 Cap, No Props
The specifics of the Save Ohio Sports Act are worth reading closely, because they go further than anything I have seen proposed in any other state. The bill would ban online sports betting entirely, requiring all wagers to be placed at licensed retail locations. It would prohibit all player prop bets. It would ban parlays. It would cap individual wagers at £79. And it would limit each bettor to a maximum of eight bets per day.
Each provision targets a specific mechanism that the bill’s sponsors believe contributes to either gambling harm or integrity risk. Banning online access eliminates the mobile-first convenience that drives 98% of Ohio’s current handle. Eliminating props removes the market category most closely associated with the Clase pitch-fixing scheme and with athlete harassment. Banning parlays targets the product type with the widest sportsbook margins and the highest correlation with problem gambling behavior. The £79 cap and eight-bet daily limit are designed to constrain volume and prevent the kind of impulsive, high-frequency wagering that characterises compulsive betting.
From a market perspective, the cumulative effect would be devastating. Ohio’s £8.1 billion in handle was built on mobile accessibility, prop markets, and parlays. Remove those three pillars and the remaining in-person, capped, prop-free market would generate a fraction of the current volume. The tax revenue that Ohio has come to depend on — over £0.79 billion in operator GGR implies tens of millions in tax receipts — would collapse proportionally.
Governor DeWine’s Role and the Athlete Harassment Catalyst
The Save Ohio Sports Act did not emerge from nowhere. Governor Mike DeWine has been the most vocal major-office holder in the UK on the subject of sports betting’s harms, and his influence on the bill’s framing is unmistakable. DeWine declared that the evidence prop betting is harming athletics in Ohio was reaching critical mass, pointing to threats against Ohio athletes and to the suspensions of two high-profile Ohio professionals — Clase and Ortiz — as proof that the market had outpaced the safeguards.
DeWine’s evolution on the issue is instructive. He signed the bill that legalized sports betting in Ohio in 2021, and in its early days, the market was presented as a revenue boon and a consumer-freedom win. By 2025, DeWine was publicly lamenting the power of betting companies and the depth of their resources to push people toward placing that next bet. The shift from booster to skeptic happened in less than four years, driven by a cascade of real-world harms that played out in the governor’s own state.
The athlete harassment angle is central to the bill’s political logic. Reports that Ohio college athletes had received threats from bettors — some sent through social media, others communicated in person at sporting events — gave DeWine a tangible, sympathetic harm to point to. This was not an abstract argument about public health statistics. It was a narrative about young people being threatened because strangers lost money betting on their performances. That narrative proved more politically potent than any revenue projection.
Industry and Stakeholder Reactions
The industry response has been swift and predictable. Sportsbook operators and the UK Gambling Commission have argued that the bill is an overreaction that would push bettors toward unregulated offshore platforms, eliminate consumer protections, and destroy a tax revenue stream without actually reducing gambling harm. They point to the fact that illegal betting existed in Ohio long before legalization and would resume immediately if the legal market were dismantled.
There is a legitimate argument in that position. Prohibition has a poor track record as a harm-reduction strategy, and the historical evidence from alcohol, cannabis, and offshore gambling suggests that banning a widely desired activity does not eliminate demand — it redirects it to unregulated channels where the harms are worse and the oversight is nonexistent. The industry’s framing is self-serving, obviously, but the underlying logic is not easily dismissed.
Sports leagues have been more cautious in their public statements. MLB supported the national micro-bet cap and has signaled willingness to work with regulators on integrity measures, but the league has not endorsed the kind of wholesale market rollback that the Save Ohio Sports Act proposes. The tension is obvious: MLB profits from sportsbook partnerships and data deals, and a jurisdiction-level ban on props and online betting directly threatens that revenue.
Problem-gambling advocates are split. Some support the bill as a necessary corrective in a state where the market grew too fast and the guardrails were too thin. Others worry that it goes too far, eliminating legal channels without adequately funding treatment and prevention programs that would address the root causes of gambling harm. The bill’s text includes no new funding for problem-gambling services, which undermines its framing as a public-health measure.
My assessment, after watching sports-betting legislation evolve across dozens of jurisdictions, is that the Save Ohio Sports Act is unlikely to pass in its current form. The revenue interests opposing it are enormous, and the bill’s most extreme provisions — eight bets per day, no online access — would face constitutional challenges from operators with existing licences. But the bill has already achieved something its sponsors may value more than passage: it has moved the Overton window. Proposals that were unthinkable two years ago are now part of the legislative conversation, and that shift will influence how other jurisdictions approach sports-betting regulation going forward. The broader trajectory of how state and federal responses are evolving is something I cover in the context of MLB’s gambling policy framework.
What specific restrictions does the Save Ohio Sports Act propose?
The bill would ban online sports betting, prohibit all player prop bets and parlays, cap individual wagers at £79, and limit each bettor to eight bets per day. All wagering would be restricted to licensed retail locations. The cumulative effect would eliminate the mobile-first market that currently generates 98% of Ohio’s sports betting handle.
Is the Save Ohio Sports Act likely to pass?
In its current form, the bill faces significant opposition from sportsbook operators, the UK Gambling Commission, and legislators who rely on sports betting tax revenue. Its most restrictive provisions would also likely face legal challenges from licensed operators. However, the bill has shifted the legislative conversation and may result in more targeted reforms such as stricter prop-bet regulations or enhanced problem-gambling funding, even if the full package does not become law.
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