Utah lawmakers advance bill to ban prop bets

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2025/11/14: Massachusetts lawmaker regrets vote to legalize gambling, wants to ban in-play prop bets 2025/08/12: Ohio lawmaker opposes governor’s push to ban prop bets 2026/01/16: NCAA urges a ban on prop bets after new point shaving scandal 2025/04/09: North Carolina lawmakers explore ban on college prop betting

The Backstory

Why the prop-bet fight landed in Utah

Utah’s move to expand the state’s constitutional definition of gambling to explicitly include proposition wagers arrives after a year when in-game betting spilled from sportsbook apps into courtrooms, locker rooms and statehouses. While the state remains one of the nation’s most restrictive on gambling, lawmakers framed their action as a preemptive step to clarify gray areas and shut the door on wagers that target discrete player actions or micro-moments in a game. That focus tracks with a broader national reassessment of so-called prop bets as the fastest-growing slice of legal sports wagering and a flashpoint for integrity and athlete-safety concerns.

Elsewhere, policymakers and regulators have begun to distinguish between traditional bets on outcomes and high-frequency, in-play markets that can make individual athletes the subject of speculative swings — and, critics say, of harassment. Utah’s bill follows a string of controversies that have sharpened the debate over how much risk states are willing to accept in exchange for new tax revenue and consumer choice.

Backlash builds against in-play wagers

The political pivot away from in-game props is not confined to conservative states. In Massachusetts, Sen. John Keenan proposed the “Bettor Health Act” to ban in-play prop bets and curb advertising, saying he regrets supporting legalization. His bill would also increase operator payments to fund problem gambling services, even as the state reports more than $315 million in tax revenue since early 2023. Keenan’s push underscores a growing view among some Democrats that the social costs of always-on wagering — especially props that update during live broadcasts — outweigh budget gains.

States that rushed to open markets after the Supreme Court struck down the federal ban in 2018 are now calibrating. The first wave emphasized channeling existing demand into regulated books and capturing taxable revenue. The second wave is about trimming markets most vulnerable to abuse or manipulation. Prop bets, which can be settled within minutes and do not always affect the final score, sit at the center of that recalibration. Regulators and legislators are reassessing whether these micro-markets invite misconduct and create friction between fans and players.

Ohio’s split screen shows the stakes

Ohio illustrates the political and economic crosscurrents. Gov. Mike DeWine urged regulators to remove prop markets in professional sports after a high-profile investigation involving two Cleveland Guardians pitchers and a surge of threats to athletes. But statehouse resistance emerged quickly. Rep. Brian Stewart argued that prop bets should remain legal because they drive engagement and a significant share of Ohio’s $359 million in tax revenue from sports betting since January 2023. He supports reinstating college props, which Ohio already bans, a position he concedes is unlikely under current regulators.

The Ohio split captures the core trade-off facing states: prop markets deepen user activity and tax receipts but also heighten exposure to instant, targeted wagers that can be gamed or weaponized on social media. For operators, a patchwork of rules complicates product design and compliance. For states, uneven bans risk shifting bettors — and potential integrity problems — across borders or into offshore books.

College sports drive urgency — and a crackdown

No venue has amplified these tensions more than college athletics. The NCAA is pressing states to eliminate individual player props, citing integrity risks and the well-being of unpaid student-athletes. After federal prosecutors charged 26 people and alleged that 39 players across more than 17 Division I men’s basketball teams were swept into a point-shaving and bribery scheme, NCAA President Charlie Baker urged regulators to shut down college player props entirely and strengthen penalties for harassment and manipulation attempts. The association says its integrity monitoring spans 22,000 contests but that enforcement is outpaced by the speed and granularity of today’s markets.

States are responding unevenly. North Carolina, which shattered wagering handle records in March 2025, introduced bipartisan legislation to ban college prop betting at commercial online sportsbooks starting July 1, 2025, if enacted. Ohio, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania and Louisiana have already prohibited player props on college sports. These measures aim to remove the most direct vectors for point-shaving and to reduce the incentive for bad actors to target individual student performance.

The NCAA is also working the data and distribution levers. In a recent extension of its partnership with Genius Sports, Baker announced an added condition that blocks sportsbooks from offering “negative” props tied to athlete underperformance if partners want continued access to official NCAA data through 2032. That clause is designed to tamp down the worst abuse directed at young athletes and to narrow the menu of markets that can invite real-time harassment when a prop is trending toward a loss.

From headlines to definitions, the legal ground is shifting

The pressure campaign is changing not just what can be bet but how “betting” is defined in law. Utah’s approach — clarifying that proposition wagers fall within its constitutional gambling ban — mirrors a trend toward codifying distinctions that were murky when most statutes were written. Lawmakers are also drawing brighter lines between sportsbooks and prediction markets, which trade on broader economic or political outcomes and often claim a separate regulatory lane. That parsing is now central to litigation and enforcement as courts and agencies sort out which products fall under gaming statutes and which do not.

In Massachusetts, the policy debate is running in parallel with courtroom battles over what types of financial or event contracts land in state or federal jurisdiction. A judge recently left a high-profile prediction market case in state court, a move that could shape the boundaries of what constitutes regulated wagering versus a different class of speculative contract. These decisions will influence how far states can go in carving out exceptions or erecting bans without triggering preemption fights or driving activity to federal regulators.

What to watch next

Several questions will determine whether the prop-bet rollback remains targeted or broad. First, do more governors follow DeWine in pressing regulators to act quickly, or does resistance like Stewart’s keep professional props largely intact? Second, how aggressively do states align around a uniform approach to college props to cut off cross-border arbitrage? Third, do data partnerships and “negative prop” bans meaningfully reduce harassment and integrity flags, or do markets and bad actors simply migrate to different wagers?

For operators, the near-term risk is a revenue squeeze if high-frequency markets shrink. For leagues and schools, the upside is clearer guardrails that reduce manipulation opportunities and tamp down abuse aimed at players. For states like Utah, defining proposition betting up front may avert ambiguity that has hamstrung peers. The next wave of legislation — from Massachusetts’ bid to curb in-play props and ads to North Carolina’s targeted college ban — will show whether the industry can recalibrate without a federal mandate or whether fragmentation forces Washington or courts to weigh in.