Regulated sports betting in the United States is an increasingly attractive option for state governments that are looking to boost their tax revenues. That idea seems to be working in places like New Jersey, but that’s definitely not the case in Oregon.
For the fiscal year ending June 30 Scoreboard, the state’s regulated sports betting app is set to lose $5.3 million. That massive loss is going to be tough to explain to Oregon tax payers who were expecting regulated sports betting to earn $6.3 during that same period. Even worse, state officials won’t even be able to blame outside vendors since Scoreboard is actually run by the Oregon State Lottery.
In a statement reported on by the Willamette Weekly, an unidentified lottery official described the situation as follows, “Original projections have been revised downward to reflect evolving estimates around black market capture rate, lack of NCAA wagering, tax withholding, intrastate competition, margin and product technical issues.”
There’s a lot to unpack there, but one of the big issues that sticks out is “the lack of NCAA wagering”. Oregon officials may have saved the supposed integrity of college sports by keeping them out of the sports betting mix, but they definitely left a lot of money sitting on the table. That seems like a pretty bone-headed idea in a state that lacks a professional sports team but includes the always competitive University of Oregon Ducks football program.
Lottery spokesman Matt Shelby commented on the issue saying, “The ability to offer collegiate wagering would speed our progress towards profitability–increasing revenue with very little additional expense. But there doesn’t seem to be much appetite for that in the Legislature.”
Until that time, Oregon can probably count on very spotty success for their new sports betting app.