Ohio Reconsiders Its Sports Betting Tax Increase for 2024

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00:00Meanwhile, all right, this was a surprise to see that we're going to be talking about this,

00:03a state actually cutting sports betting taxes. Pat, I mean, around the country,

00:07this was our story here in 2024, was every state saying we're not getting enough money

00:13via sports betting taxes, let's hike it up. Ohio going down here, how's that happen?

00:18I know, it's a really interesting kind of dynamic here because Ohio is one of those

00:23states that came back and said, hey, we need to make more money from sports betting,

00:27less than six months after they launched. The governor signed this 10% hike to Texas,

00:34it initially started at 10%. The governor signed into a budget with a budget line item that said,

00:40nope, let's get it up to 20%. And then now we've got a bill in a lame duck session that says, whoa,

00:47that was premature, let's get it back to 10%. It's actually one of the main sports betting sponsors

00:53that originally passed it. And we'll see if there's any traction. There was a gaming study

01:01that a bunch of legislators turned in this summer that also said the tax hike was premature.

01:09So there are definitely parts of the legislator who say, no, let's get this done, let's bring it

01:15back and see where we can appropriately raise it in the future rather than just kind of willy-nilly

01:20doing it. But yeah, to your point, whether it's this year or next year, this tax level has been

01:28a huge discussion point in the sports betting industry. We've had Illinois also pass a tiered

01:39system that goes 20% to 40%, depending on the revenue levels of the operators, and that's up

01:44from their 15% initially. You've had a couple other states introduce stuff. We're talking right

01:49now a Louisiana bill that was just introduced. It has been withdrawn now, but it jumped it from

01:5851% to equal New York, which is kind of crazy. Even when you were listening to the discussion

02:05points, they were like, listen, the population in New York can sustain that, that's fine.

02:09Louisiana has nothing like that, we can't do that. The sponsor, he did to his credit in the

02:15committee hearing, the first committee hearing of his bill said, all right, I'm hearing a lot of

02:18pushback, I'm going to withdraw this, I'm going to listen to the feedback, we're going to work on

02:22this, we're going to make it a little bit better. So I do think at some point, you'll see another

02:26bill probably next year in Louisiana that will raise a tax, probably not to 51%, but raise it up

02:33a little bit because they feel like they're getting a little shortchanged with how rapidly

02:37it's taken off. So yeah, I mean, tax is a huge issue in sports betting, and then you get the

02:44arguments about competitiveness and everything else like that. So it's something that

02:48legislators, regulators, sportsbooks are obviously going to keep an eye on,

02:53and it will be kind of a shifting market here in the next year or two.