COLUMBUS, Ohio — If Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine could turn back time, he would not have signed the law that legalized sports betting in his state.
With two Cleveland Guardians pitchers and an Ohio-born guard for the Miami Heat snared in separate betting-related criminal probes, the second-term Republican says he now “absolutely” regrets unleashing this unbridled new industry on Ohioans with his 2021 signature.
“Look, we’ve always had gambling, we’re always going to have gambling,” the governor 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.”
His comments reflect a reckoning that’s unfolding across sports and politics as sports betting becomes more ingrained across much of the U.S. The wave of legalization in recent years unleashed a massive industry centered around betting and, more recently, a wave of investigations and arrests tied to allegations of rigged games. It’s a dynamic that the Ohio governor says he doesn’t think lawmakers fully anticipated.
“Ohio shouldn’t have done it,” he said.
The governor recently emerged as a key player in the negotiations between Major League Baseball and its authorized gaming operators that resulted in the capping of prop bets on individual pitches at $200 and excluding them from parlays. The deal was announced earlier this month, a day after Guardians pitchers Luis Ortiz and Emmanuel Clase were indicted and accused of rigging pitches at the behest of gamblers. Both have pleaded not guilty.
“Governor 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 told reporters last week.
And the governor doesn’t plan to stop there. Shortly after Ortiz and Clase were first placed on paid leave this summer, he announced he’d be asking the commissioners and players’ unions of all the major U.S. sports leagues to ban prop bets — sometimes called micro-betting — like those implicated in the Guardians scandal. While that goal has not yet been achieved — micro-betting is critical to the business strategy in an industry with over $11 billion in revenue in the U.S. this year — the governor said limits put in place for baseball are a good first step.
“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.”
Those recent sentiments mark a notable position shift after the Republican pledged to — and then did — sign a legalization law that was sweeping in scope. The legislation allowed adults 21 and older to place sports bets online, at casinos, at racinos and at stand-alone betting kiosks in bars, restaurants and professional sports facilities. Wagering was permitted under the bill on professional sports teams, motor sports, Olympic events, golf, tennis and even major college sports, including Ohio State football.
It was clear in the run-up to the governor’s re-election in 2022 that the gambling industry was intensely interested in what was transpiring in the state.
An AP investigation that year found that casino operators, slot machine makers, gaming technology companies, sports interests or their lobbyists donated nearly $1 million in 2021 and 2022 to the nonprofit Republican Governors Association, which supported pro-DeWine committees through its campaign arm. Entities and individuals with ties to the industry also donated more than $22,000 directly to the. DeWine campaign, according to campaign finance reports.
A review of more recent campaign filings finds that industry largesse has continued to flow to Ohio politicians with sway over gaming’s future.
Lobbyists and a PAC with ties to Jack Casino, DraftKings, FanDuel, MGM, Gamewise, Hard Rock, Underdog, Rush Street or Caesars have donated about $130,000 to Ohio state legislators in the past three years, records show — about a third of that directed to top House and Senate leaders. Then-Republican Lt. Gov. Jon Husted, who was positioning as Mr. DeWine’s likely gubernatorial successor, had received about $9,000 from industry-connected entities and individuals before being appointed to the U.S. Senate.
At least one powerful state lawmaker, Republican House Finance Chairman Brian Stewart, had vowed to introduce legislation protecting prop bets prior to professional baseball’s crackdown.
“I think that prop bets are a significant part of sports betting in the state of Ohio,” the congressman told cleveland.com in August. “It’s something that clearly a lot of Ohioans have taken part in and enjoy, and I don’t think there’s something that we should eliminate entirely.”
Still, the governor, who faces term limits next year, said he would be happy to sign a repeal of Ohio’s sports betting law at this point, but he’s certain there’s not enough support for that at the Ohio Statehouse.
“There’s not the votes for that. I can count,” he said. “I’m not always right, but I can pretty much guarantee you that they’re not ready to do this.”
Instead, he’ll continue to make his case in other ways.
An avid baseball fan, he is particularly of his hometown Cincinnati Reds, said he believes “these sports are playing with dynamite here and the integrity of the sports is at stake.”
“So, you try to do what you can do, and you try and warn people, and try to take action like we did with collegiate, and you try take action like what we’re doing with baseball,” he said. “But we’ve got to keep pushing these other sports to do it, too.”
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