In May 2026, 98.5 percent of the sports wagers placed in Ohio went through a phone. Two months later, a group of Republican lawmakers filed a bill that would make every one of those wagers illegal: no online betting, no parlays, no player props, no live markets, and a cap of $100 a bet. Ohio is one of the largest legal markets in the country, and it is also the state where the debate over whether live betting should exist at all has gone furthest.
Ohio’s market today
Sports betting in Ohio is legal online statewide and at retail locations for anyone 21 or older who is physically in the state. The Ohio Casino Control Commission regulates it. Live betting is fully available on pro sports and on college games, with one restriction: no player props on college athletes, pregame or in-play. That makes Ohio a useful test case. The rules a live bettor meets here today are broad, and a proposal that would remove live betting from the state entirely was filed in Columbus in July 2026.
Ohio’s 20 percent operator tax sits between its neighbors’ extremes: Indiana charges 9.5 percent and Pennsylvania 36 percent. The market is large. Ohio sportsbooks generated more than $1 billion in revenue in 2025, producing nearly $210 million in tax revenue, according to Covers. Retail is a small share; in the first five months of 2026, retail produced about $1 million of the nearly $90 million in sports betting tax collected.
From the 2021 law to a universal launch
December 2021: the law
Ohio’s legislature passed its sports gaming law in December 2021, and Governor Mike DeWine signed it that month. The law put the Casino Control Commission in charge and allowed betting online, at retail sportsbooks, and through other licensed locations.
January 1, 2023: everything at once
Instead of opening counters first and apps later, Ohio launched retail and mobile on the same day, January 1, 2023. That Sunday was a full NFL slate in the last stretch of the regular season, so the apps went straight into high-volume live football.
2023: the tax doubles
The launch rate of 10 percent did not last. About a month after launch, the governor called for doubling it, and lawmakers raised it to 20 percent in 2023. That rate still applies as of October 20, 2026.
College props: the February 2024 ban
On January 31, 2024, the NCAA asked the Commission to ban betting on individual college athletes’ performance. On February 23, 2024, the Commission agreed. Operators had until March 1 to remove the markets and void outstanding wagers on them. Eight of the nineteen operators active in the state objected. If you held a longer-term college prop at the time, such as a basketball player’s points total for the season, the ticket was voided instead of settled, whatever the player went on to do.
The rule covers any wager on an athlete’s performance or statistics in a sporting event governed by the NCAA. It applies to every school, in-state or not, and to in-play as well as pregame bets. Team markets are untouched, so a bettor can still take Ohio State’s live spread in the third quarter or the second-half total of a Cincinnati game.
A legislative study commission later argued the ban was unnecessary and asked the Commission to rescind it. It remains in force.
Ohio was one of four states, with Louisiana, Maryland and Vermont, that had banned college player props outright by January 2026, according to Missouri Gaming Commission staff.
HB 971: a bill aimed at live betting itself
House Bill 971, introduced on July 1, 2026 by two Republican representatives with eight more Republican members in support, would remake the market. As described by Covers, it would:
- make sports wagering available only at retail locations, ending online betting
- ban wagering on college sports, parlays, player props and live markets
- cap each wager at $100 and allow no more than eight bets in 24 hours
- bar credit cards and borrowed money for funding accounts, and limit advertising and promotions
When reported, the bill had not been assigned to a House committee. It would need to pass both chambers and be signed by the governor, who has publicly opposed player props and has said he regrets signing sports betting into law.
For a live bettor, few bills in any state have proposed going this far. Every in-play wager, the main use of a betting app, would become illegal in Ohio if it passed in its introduced form. Nothing in the reporting through October 20, 2026 suggests it has moved.
Live betting in practice, under current law
A worked example: Browns, third quarter
Suppose the Browns trail by 6 early in the third quarter. Their live moneyline is +190 and the opponent’s is -230. A $20 bet on the Browns returns $20 × 190 ÷ 100 = $38.00 in profit if they come back, $58.00 in total.
Check the margin. +190 implies 100 ÷ 290 = 34.48 percent. -230 implies 230 ÷ 330 = 69.70 percent. Together they sum to 104.18 percent. The 4.18-point overround is in the normal range for a live NFL moneyline.
A full Sunday under the HB 971 limits
The bill’s numbers are easier to judge against a real schedule. A typical NFL Sunday has three windows of games, and Ohio has two teams, the Bengals and the Browns. Under current law, a fan could place a $25 live bet at the end of each quarter of both Ohio games and still have the afternoon and night games to watch: eight bets on the two home-state games alone, $200 in total stakes.
Under HB 971 as introduced, those eight would be the entire allowance for 24 hours, and the $100 cap would also stop anyone from consolidating them into one larger ticket on the evening game, while none of the eight could be placed in-play or online. The fan would need to be at a retail counter before kickoff, every bet would have to be a pregame single on a pro game, and a ninth bet on the night game would be refused. Even a modest bettor would hit the cap before the late games started.
Same game parlays
Same game parlays on pro games are allowed in Ohio today and would be banned under HB 971. They are priced below the straight product of the legs whenever the legs are correlated, which is the usual case in a single game. The same game parlay page covers how that discount works.
The teams that drive the volume
Ohio fields teams in every major league and two in several: the Bengals and Browns in the NFL, the Guardians and Reds in MLB, the Cavaliers in the NBA, the Blue Jackets in the NHL, and the Crew and FC Cincinnati in MLS. Add Ohio State football and the state’s other college programs, and there is rarely a night without a home-state game. That is part of why the online share is so high: if you want to bet the next drive or the next inning, a phone is the only practical way to do it.
Taxes, geolocation and help
Ohio moved to a flat state income tax rate of 2.75 percent for 2026. On the $38.00 profit above, the state’s share is $1.05. Federal tax applies on top, and from tax year 2026 the federal loss deduction is limited to 90 percent of losses, for itemizers only.
Every Ohio neighbor, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana and Michigan, has legal online betting. Crossing a border keeps a bettor inside a legal market but swaps the rulebook. A bettor in Cincinnati who crosses into Kentucky, for example, is under Kentucky’s rules instead, where the 2026 law targets props on Kentucky’s own college athletes, not on every college player.
Michigan and West Virginia both report no college restrictions, as the state table records, so an Ohio bettor in Toledo who crosses into Michigan may find college player props that Ohio removed in 2024. Indiana keeps pregame college props but bars them once a game starts.
Ohio’s Time Out Ohio program combines voluntary exclusion from the Lottery, casinos, racinos and sports gaming. Terms are one year, five years or lifetime; enrollment is online at TimeOutOhio.com or in person at a casino, racino or the Commission’s Columbus office. Enrollees can receive a year of free blocking software. The Ohio Problem Gambling Helpline, 1-800-589-9966, is free and open around the clock.
The side-track: a governor’s second thoughts
DeWine signed the 2021 law, pushed the 2023 tax increase, backed the 2024 college prop ban, and has since said he regrets signing sports betting into law. It is unusual for the governor who legalized a market to question it in public while still in office.
HB 971 is the furthest that line of thinking has gone in any legislature. Its eight-bets-a-day cap is the detail that would end live betting even if the other provisions were softened: one NFL game can easily produce more than eight in-play decisions for a single fan.