Limiting Certain Sports Bets - Well-Intentioned, but Problematic?
There are growing concerns in the U.S. about what appears to be a rise in compulsive gambling - especially among young men - since a 2018 U.S. Supreme Court ruling opened the door for any state to legalize comprehensive sports betting that previously only had existed in Nevada.
One of the targets is multi-leg parlay wagers, which by far produce the highest profit margins for sportsbooks.
Another is "prop betting," where wagers are placed on a single athlete's performance. A third is "microbets," where - for example - a gambler can bet repeatedly over the course of a football game whether each possession will lead to a touchdown, field goal, punt, or turnover.
A national spotlight is shining on Ohio, where Gov. Mike DeWine has called signing a sports betting bill into law his "biggest regret" of his time in office.
“Look, we’ve always had gambling, we’re always going to have gambling,” DeWine said. “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.”
Ohio lawmakers’ bold proposal
In early April 2026, DeWine's fellow Republicans in the statehouse introduced a bill that would go a quantum leap further - seeking a ban on all mobile sports wagering.
Ohio already bans player prop bets on college athletes, and the bill would also ban prop bets on professional athletes. Parlay wagering in Ohio? Not if this bill gets to the desk of DeWine, who might be a good bet to sign it.
But have the Ohio lawmakers weighed all of the angles? In 2025, taxable mobile sports betting revenue was $584.9 million. If that figure rises only modestly to $600 million in 2026, then at the state's current sports betting tax rate of 20%, it's likely that the state will forgo $100 million in tax revenue from passage of such a bill.
Betting at the state's four casinos still would be legal under the proposal, but last year there was only $7.1 million of taxable revenue produced by in-person wagering at those locations.
While that number clearly would rise as Ohioans living near one of the casinos likely would do some of their gambling on-site, at best that would only be a tiny fraction of the amount currently wagered online in the state.
And now that state residents have had a few years to place wagers online so conveniently, it's highly likely that many - in many cases unknowingly - would set their sights instead on illegal, offshore, unregulated, and untaxed sportsbooks.
Louisiana lawmaker changes her tune
In early 2026, Louisiana state Sen. Katrina Jackson-Andrews introduced a bill to ban "prop bets" and "microbets" that her bill defined as "a side wager on a part of a sport or athletics event that does not concern the final outcome of the sport or athletic event."
Jackson-Andrews was eager to incorporate a ban on such wagers into Louisiana's gambling laws - until March 31, when the state's Gaming Control Board published a fiscal note that reviewed how such a ban might impact the state's gambling tax revenue.
The note was sobering, with an estimation of a loss of $28.9 million in Fiscal Year 2026 if such a ban was in place for all 12 months. That was based on an estimate that "prop-bets and micro-bets account for approximately 40% of mobile sports wagering" in Louisiana.
That figure includes a projected shortfall of $15.9 million in the state's General Fund from its share of the total tax dollars collected from betting, and that led to a reversal by Jackson-Andrews.
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An amended proposal in 2027?
“I received a fiscal note and, although this bill is well-intentioned, I plan on continuing legislation next year to try to clean up what is happening, especially with our young adults,” Jackson-Andrews said.
"I realize the state general fund alone will lose $15 million. I try to bring very responsible legislation and I believe this piece is a responsible piece of legislation, but also, serving on finance, understanding that if this bill moves forward we will have to find that $15 million for the state general fund.
“That doesn’t mean that I’m done with this legislation,” Jackson-Andrews added. "That means, for this session, I am done, and trying to come back with something a little more reasonable regarding the fiscal cost.”
The fiscal note did add that, "As a consumer activity, overall demand for lottery and gaming is relatively inelastic, meaning total spending is unlikely to significantly decline when specific options are removed.
"Instead, consumer activity is expected to shift to other available forms of gaming rather than be substantially reduced. To the degree this happens, the projected negative revenue impacts may be mitigated to an unknown degree."
Of course, much of that spending - perhaps even the majority of it - would wind up in the pockets of those illegal offshore sportsbooks.
The fiscal note was released on the same day that a state Senate committee held a hearing on the proposal. Representatives from the Sports Betting Alliance - which includes industry leaders DraftKings, FanDuel, BetMGM, Fanatics, and Bet365 - testified at the hearing.
Judiciary Committee Chairman Mike Reese said afterwards that he appreciated all of the feedback on the issue.
“I hope that the industry that’s present today is hearing what those concerns are from a social aspect, from a mental aspect, from the aspect on the impacts of our youth - many of which you and I would agree are more important to our state than the fiscal impact of the note,” said Reese.
“But you have to balance that with the idea that there’s also this illegal market that could supplant whatever we were to take away from the regulated market makes the whole conversation difficult. But I hope that the industry will come to the table and help us address the shortcomings that you’ve pointed out here today.”
Would even New Jersey ban microbets?
In March 2026, bills were simultaneously introduced in the New Jersey state Senate and Assembly that would prohibit the state’s sportsbook industry from offering microbets.
The bills define microbets as a “proposition bet which is wagered live, while a sport or athletic event is ongoing, and concerns the outcome of the next play or action occurring in the sport or athletic event.”
The bill sponsors assert that aside from the more obvious concern about compulsive gamblers losing large amounts of money if their dozens of wagers per hour mostly are losing bets, microbets make a sporting event more susceptible to rigged results.
Part of the controversy in Ohio stems from the fact that two Cleveland Guardians major league pitchers – Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz – allegedly were working with bettors from 2023 to 2025 to help them win wagers on the speed and outcome of individual pitches.
A federal filing in February 2026 alleged that Clase participated in this manner in at least 48 games in that span. Their trials may begin as soon as this spring.
The fact that the betting limitations have extended even to New Jersey – whose sports betting legalization supporters spent six years in federal court before the landmark Supreme Court ruling in 2018 – is a major sign that the trend is only growing.
New Jersey typically ranks third only to New York and Illinois in monthly betting handle and sportsbook revenue. If lawmakers in the state that launched the entire expansion of sports betting beyond Nevada wind up pulling back on what their sportsbooks can offer, that undoubtedly would be duly noted in statehouses across the U.S..
States that have in-person sports betting only
Ohio would not be the only state that authorizes sports betting at its casinos but not online. Mississippi, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Washington do the same.
However, none of those states have nearly the population that Ohio does, so whatever tax revenue is not achieved would be far less than Ohio’s shortfall.
Tennessee, Vermont, and Wyoming are opposites in that mobile sports betting is authorized, but there are no retail locations where a bet can be placed.
Wisconsin belonged in the former group that offers only sports betting at casinos until April 2026, but Gov. Tony Evers signed a bill into law that will add mobile sports betting to the menu before the end of the calendar year.
There are many other ways in which a small subgroup of states authorize or ban certain forms of gambling. That includes bans on collegiate player props only on in-state athletes; barring voting on events like The Academy Awards and Emmys or the NFL or NBA drafts; or even the Nathan's Famous Hot-Dog Eating Contest held on July 4 at Coney Island in Brooklyn, N.Y.
College prop bans are gaining momentum
Maryland and Vermont, like Ohio, ban all collegiate prop betting, while New Jersey, Illinois, and Iowa ban wagers in in-state college athletes. Some states ban such wagers but make an exception for major tournaments.
Players on more than a dozen Division I men’s college basketball teams have been indicted in the last six months on charges of manipulating their performances to aid their betting partners, which has led the NCAA to call for all states to ban those player prop bets.
In January 2026, Missouri regulators rejected the NCAA’s request – but only because, they said, sports betting had only been legalized in the state a month earlier and therefore they needed more time to review the issue.
So far, a majority of the 39 states that allow sports betting have not fully complied with the NCAA’s request, which stems in part from documented cases of college athletes being verbally harassed at games and insulted on social media when their results do not lead to a winning wager.
Since the full-fledged national sports betting industry still is not even a decade old, a number of changes in policy in quite a few states is likely to be the norm for several years to come.
And as Ohio, Louisiana, and New Jersey are demonstrating, worries about having formally endorsed a risky activity such as gambling – arguably creating a temptation among some residents that would not otherwise have existed - may be the topic that makes the most lawmakers increasingly uncomfortable.
