Ohio State basketball fans, if your favorite team qualifies for the edition of March Madness, you won’t have to leave the state to legally bet on the Buckeyes’ progress in the tournament. In fact, you should be able to do some Ohio sports betting on some regular-season and Big Ten conference tournament games, too.
Ohio’s gambling regulators announced on Wednesday that legal sportsbooks will go live in the state on Jan. 1, 2023. For Buckeyes bettors, that means the new gambling options are just about seven months away.
Ohio sports betting starts New Year’s Day 2023
If you hoped you’d be able to get some futures down on Ohio State’s next basketball season before it began, this is disappointing news. Both online and physical sportsbooks in Ohio won’t start taking bets until Jan. 1.
The Ohio Casino Control Commission prioritized a competitive market by taking every day the law affords it to get sportsbooks up and running. Every single operator who gets a license between now and New Year’s Eve 2022 will launch on the same day.
The law allows for potentially hundreds of sports betting options in Ohio. In addition to the state’s brick-and-mortar casinos, myriad other businesses can contract with the casinos to house kiosks on their premises.
Then there are online sportsbooks, too. The law allows for up to 25 such apps to launch should licensees convince regulators they need that many. Although there have been some efforts to curtail betting on college sports, they have failed thus far.
So what specifically does that mean for Ohioans who want to place wagers on Ohio State basketball games? We’re so glad you asked.
Probable markets for Buckeye basketball
Many of the online sportsbooks which figure to be part of the landscape in Ohio offer lines for Buckeyes women’s basketball games. Most often, those include the standard moneyline, point spread, and point total bets.
Player props are rare in women’s college basketball, especially for regular-season games. Live bets, such as quarter spreads and totals, are available on varying levels from one app to the next.
It will be up to each operator whether it wants to offer futures for things like the Big Ten conference tournament title and regular-season title. Like with live bets, the availability of such markets has fluctuated in the past.
This past year, most legal sportsbooks in nearby states did offer futures for March Madness. At the same time, player props and futures for player awards were still off the books in 2022.
That could change in 2023, especially if Ohio State has a strong season. What we know for sure is that Ohio sports betting starts on Jan. 1, 2023, and Buckeyes women’s basketball should be on the board.
