Ohio’s House has passed a bill that effectively legalizes and regulates paid-entry daily fantasy sports. This happened on Wednesday, May 24th which was shortly after the state of New Jersey’s Assembly passed their own fantasy sports legislation as well. This highlighted a big week for the top daily fantasy sports sites like FanDuel and DraftKings.
Bill H 132 passed through the house without much pushback as the voting results were 80 to 15, making it an overwhelming victory for fantasy sports betting in Ohio. The bill will now head to the Senate and the final decision should come sooner than later. Even though Ohio that has actively attempted to keep daily fantasy sports illegal, the Ohio attorney general still recommended that the state’s legislation act before it was too late.
As of now, we are not sure if the Ohio fantasy sports sites that are currently running are in violation of Ohio’s Revised Codes in the gambling section of Chapter 2915. Because this is still in question, the extended listing of fantasy laws points to the General Assembly needing to address these issues.
A lobbyist in the DFS industry predicted that the state of Ohio would legalize and regulate fantasy sports earlier in 2017 and we are finally seeing the results. The next step is to see if this bill does will at the next level.
Other State Fantasy Sports News
This news is big for the daily fantasy sports industry because to this point, it hadn’t been a very good last few months. There were some huge setbacks as of late as multiple states have failed to pass bills. Texas legislation just recently decided to delay the potential legalization of fantasy sports until 2019 and Florida’s Senate just failed to pass a bill that would have legalized DFS as well. Not to mention DraftKings and FanDuel also have decided to cease all operations in Alabama and will not alter that stance until there is a significant change in the near future.
It’s not all bad news out there though as Vermont, Pennsylvania and Arkansas have both actually passed fantasy sports bills recently as well. Vermont’s governor still needs to sign it for it to become a law but it is looking like that will happen soon.
While the bad news has outweighed the good news so far in 2017, the momentum of Ohio and these other states potentially legalizing fantasy sports is very good news. Hopefully, this momentum for sports betting in Ohio continues as the year goes on.