New York Considers Banning Live Sports Betting in 2026

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00:00As we wrapped up 2025, some of the topics from a salacious nature in sports betting

00:05surrounded some of the live betting opportunities that involved some allegations of prop betting

00:13with the NBA and also Major League Baseball. And Sam, it looks like the state of New York

00:18is taking a close look at this and asking the question, do we really need to have live betting

00:24during games with all of the other opportunities that people have to bet before the game? I think

00:29it's probably a fair question. I don't know if that ends up happening and it gets banned,

00:34but certainly I could see some maximum bets coming on this stuff soon, too.

00:39All right. Definitely interesting that this question is now being floated in the biggest

00:43legal sports betting market in New York, where, like you mentioned, Craig, there's now a bill that

00:48has been proposed by Assemblymember Linda Rosenthal that would effectively ban live betting on all

00:53games, which, as we know, is a huge portion of the money that sports books take on the games.

01:00It's gone from about 50 percent of total handle they take on games to some in some cases, it's 70

01:05or 80 percent, you know, depending on the game, depending on whether it was a big opportunity

01:09that attracts a lot of live betting or, you know, other various factors. But it's this

01:13really segment of sports betting that sports books have spent a lot of money, a lot of investment,

01:18a lot of time to grow. So if New York would ban this, that would be obviously huge news would be

01:23the first state to do that. And obviously, New York, a very big state with sweeping implications

01:28for other markets as well. As you alluded to, Craig, it seems to be yet another response

01:32to the blowback that we've had from the recent sports betting scandals in the NBA and in the MLB

01:38as well. You had just about a month ago the state of Ohio, which is where, you know, the Cleveland

01:45Guardians pitchers were kind of implicated in a scheme where they would pitch certain types of

01:52pitches to start innings that allegedly a group of bad actors would then take to live betting markets

01:57and bet immediately on what they would pitch. As a result of that kind of, you know, of that

02:02scandal coming to a head, the governor proposed banning all micro bets. So not live betting

02:08specifically, but all quick parts of live betting. That's like Next Drive in the NFL, certainly in

02:15baseball next pitch type. What they kind of came to as a result there was the MLB agreeing

02:20to ban people from being able to bet on, you know, what the next pitch would be. So it wasn't

02:25a huge sweeping change that extended to all sports, but still pretty big. The NBA recently

02:30issued a memo saying that it was, you know, evaluating whether or not it's going to allow

02:35player prop betting to continue or whether it needs to put more restrictions on that. We've

02:39seen in the past with the Jonte Porter scandal teams now sports books now rather no longer

02:45offer player props on guys that are on 10 day contracts or two way contracts to kind of limit

02:51the scope of what could be, you know, taken advantage of by a group of bad actors. So I think

02:56this is just another example of pushback you're seeing from all these scandals, whether that actually

03:02comes to the actual proposal getting passed as it is. I would be doubtful that the state would ban

03:08live betting at this point, but it could be weaseled down or parsed down into some other sort of

03:12smaller restriction. And certainly the notion that it's being proposed and talked about is big news

03:18in and of itself, because, you know, just a year ago, the idea that someone would ban live betting

03:23totally would be something that I think most most states would scoff at. But now we're seeing a bill

03:27obviously move to the legislature and we'll continue to track its progress throughout the year.