Oregon’s sports bettors are celebrating after the state lottery finally launched its new digital wagering product.
On Wednesday night, the Oregon Lottery launched Scoreboard, its online and mobile betting product, with technology provided by European platform provider SBTech. Oregon is the 13th state now offering some form of legal wagering but only the eighth to offer a statewide digital betting product.
The Scoreboard website is currently live and apps are available for both Android (downloadable via the Scoreboard site) and iOS devices (via the App Store). The app is accessible statewide, except on tribal land, as the state’s only currently operational land-based sportsbook is at the tribal-run Chinook Winds Casino in Lincoln City, which made its debut in August.
Scoreboard offers a wide variety of betting options, including in-play wagers and early cash-out, but wagering on any college sports events is not an option in Oregon. Most other states have a more limited carveout that only prohibits wagers on matches involving local college squads, and the state should expect pressure to lift this prohibition once March Madness returns.
The Oregon Lottery’s website crashed on Tuesday, the cause of which the Lottery remains cagey about. It remains to be seen how the site will react when this weekend’s NFL action brings a surge in betting activity.
The Oregon Lottery plans to follow up Scoreboard’s digital debut with a rollout of self-service betting kiosks at lottery retailers in 2020. The Lottery is also planning to resuscitate its former Sports Action parlay betting product that was permitted under the old federal PASPA law, which the US Supreme Court struck down in May 2018 and led to this explosion of intrastate legal betting.
Oregon chose to launch a state-run digital betting product rather than a commercially competitive market. Montana and the District of Columbia are planning similar lottery-based monopolies, both of which will be supplied by Greek tech outfit Intralot. DC’s efforts have been held up by legal challenges, while Montana’s Intralot deal has also raised a number of red flags, so neither state appears likely to join the mobile betting party anytime soon.
