Status on Ohio Sports Betting Legislation

• One, it’s a poorly kept secret around Capitol Square that some professional teams are pushing hard for mobile licensees to be restricted to a single skin. This means that the professional teams/leagues would control nearly half of the skins in the state. The teams are also bemoaning the fact that other presumptive licensees already have agreements with operators in the state, leaving the teams with what they see as less than desirable options. Seizing upon this, people are saying that Senate President Huffman believes this confirms his belief that no one, casinos/racinos or teams/leagues, should be given preference for any of the licenses, which essentially contradicts the bills he advanced from the Senate (SB 176, HB 29), and is something that the casinos/racinos and teams/leagues oppose for obvious reasons.
• Two, congressional and state legislative redistricting is sucking up all of the available oxygen right now. The state legislative maps have been drawn, but are expected to be rejected by the Ohio Supreme Court and will need to be redrawn. Hearings are currently being held regarding the congressional maps. In my text conversation with a reporter, I asked if he had been looking into the lack of progress with sports betting, and his reply was that reporters simply don’t have the bandwidth right now to look into it.
• Three, the House GOP is in a bit of disarray right now. After failed efforts to push forward anti-mandate bills for vaccines, the ultra-conservatives within the caucus are disappointed with GOP leadership. While several of them are strongly supportive of sports betting legislation, it’s not hard to imagine that the GOP is reticent to hold a lot of session votes for fear of what kind of amendments could matriculate on other bills (HB 29, being in conference committee, cannot receive floor amendments; only an up or down vote on the conference committee report).

The House and Senate both have session dates scheduled for the week of December 5^th. If we are going to see sports betting approved and enacted by the end of the year, that is the likely target date at this point.