A detailed look at what paved the way

Ohio sports betting is nearly here and fans can begin placing legal sports wagers as soon as midnight on New Year’s Eve.

It’s been a relatively quick turnaround from June 1 last summer, when the Ohio Casino Control Commission announced the universal go-live date.

And it’s been almost a year since Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine signed House Bill 29 — two weeks after the Ohio Legislature overwhelmingly voted to pass the bill.

In this multipart piece, we’ll revisit the events that brought legalized sports betting back under the purview of the state level.

Check out our expert’s ranking of the best Illinois sports betting sites

From decades ago all the way to the nearing launch of Ohio sports betting, you have to go back to when a U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee held public hearings that warned against the proliferation of sports gambling in society.

Professional sports leagues and their commissioners all testified and waxed poetically about rooting out underaged gambling and maintaining the “integrity” of their game.

Ironically, a former professional athlete and NBA player in New Jersey, Sen. Bill Bradley, was primarily responsible for introducing the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) of 1992.

Bradley’s stature as a former player certainly added some authority to the bill as it passed both the House and Senate before being signed into law by President George H.W. Bush later that year.

On Jan. 1, 1993, the law went into effect, making it unlawful for states to “sponsor, operate, advertise, promote, license, or authorize” sports betting in any form.

Yet, states with some form of sports gambling already on their books were allowed to maintain those rights.

Nevada is clearly the state that comes to mind when you think about sports gambling. However, Oregon, Delaware and Montana also utilized some form of sports lotteries, which allowed them to be exempt from the new law.

What’s interesting is PASPA also had a one-year window that allowed states which operated licensed casino gaming over the previous 10 years to pass their own sports gambling laws and receive exempt status.

This caveat was written into the bill with the state of New Jersey — and Atlantic City — in mind. But for whatever reason, New Jersey never took advantage of the one-year grace period; thus, the exception expired.

Across the border, the Garden State saw its Delaware neighbor begin to have some success with sports lotteries after it was reintroduced under then-Gov. Jack Markell.

Those in Delaware were limited to NFL parlay cards that required at least three games. But what worsened matters for New Jersey were declining gambling revenues and an inability to attract visitors to Atlantic City.

In our next installment, we’ll examine how New Jersey fought to separate sports betting from the federal government’s control.