Ohio Casino Control Commission Executive Director Matthew T. Schuler announced Friday that sports betting operators can no longer accept wagers on player-specific prop bets involving intercollegiate competitions.

The decision comes less than three weeks after NCAA Executive Director Charlie Baker sent a letter to the OCCC requesting the ban, citing three reasons for what he called “good cause” to eliminate those types of bets on college players. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine supported Baker’s position, and Schuler agreed, saying “the good cause supports the NCAA’s request … because the NCAA’s request will safeguard the integrity of sports gaming and will be in the best interests of the public.”

The decision to ban player-specific prop bets on college games came despite written objections to Baker’s letter from eight licensed sportsbook operators in the state. The objections placed were mostly in general to a ban on player-specific prop bets for college games, with operators saying they had the ability to investigate their customers about bullying and harassment concerns and take “appropriate actions required by law.”

Operators also voiced concern about a potential ban driving people who want to make those type of bets toward illegal markets, but Schuler rejected that line of reasoning. He noted these type of wagers made up less than 1.4% of the handle and adjusted gross revenue in Ohio in 2023, and “yet these types of wagers most directly ‘attach an individual student-athlete’s name to a bet and therefore increase the likelihood of betting harassment being [directly] targeted toward them.'”

Operators have until March 1 to fully implement all restrictions and void all such existing wagers.

In explaining the “good cause” related to the NCAA’s request, Schuler pointed out college’s governing body had a specific aim with its request to ban player-specific prop bets: To “significantly limit the harassment, including threats, from occurring in the first place.” The NCAA provided information, according to Schuler, that showed such wagers were tied to player-specific harassment and the solution of a “decrease” in the availability of such wagers would lead to a decrease in harassment.

Another key factor in Schuler’s decision was that the NCAA provided information that was not countered by any party that a ban on player-specific prop bets would “improve student-athlete well-being, including their mental health (and) decrease the risk of insider information being solicited from college athletes or used to manipulate betting markets.”

Schuler found the NCAA’s argument to prevent harassment carried more merit than operators’ claims about investigating such incidents as they would come “after the harassment has occurred.” Schuler added that operator comments failed to “persuade me to disprove the NCAA’s request” and said there was low risk for a “perceived black market boom” when it came to player prop bets should they be made illegal.

In response to Baker’s letter, the OCCC asked operators to confidentially submit the current percentages of wager selections that would no longer be available if college prop bets were removed as well as the percentage of wager volume and handle amount of college prop bets from Jan. 1-Dec. 31, 2023 using the following criteria:

Any wager based on the following is NOT approved and is NOT permitted:
• Any proposition or “prop” bet on an individual athlete’s performance or statistics
participating in a sporting event governed by the NCAA. Only proposition bets based
on full team statistical results are permitted.

It was determined there would be 2.2% fewer available wagering options overall, while less than 0.75% of all wagers made would not have been permitted. The average handle of the bets that would not have been permitted came to $4.75 million, while the total handle for such wagers totaled $104.6 million.

Ohio sportsbooks generated $7.67 billion handle — with nearly 97% of that from mobile betting apps — and $938 million in adjusted gross revenue in their first year of operation after launching on New Year’s Day 2023. The OCCC does not break out handle and revenue by sport category.

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