After weeks and months of teasing Oregon’s bettors with release date for the Oregon Lottery’s sports betting app: Scoreboard, that always danced just out of reach, the lottery has announced what appears to be a firm date: October 7.
So reported the Oregonian’s reporter John Canzano last week. He wrote that the only remaining hitch is approval of funding.
Initially, lottery spokesman Matthew Shelby said the lottery was aiming at launching by the beginning of the NFL season. In March the lottery chose SBTech to be its tech provider, an action that was initially controversial because one of the companies that lost out on the bidding made allegations that SBTech, an international company, was offering technology to services providing online betting to countries where online gaming is illegal. This prompted an extensive investigation by the Lottery, which determined the allegations were unfounded.
But that didn’t appear to cause the delay in releasing the app. The lottery cautiously continued testing of the app and at its September report to the Oregon State Lottery Commission, reported that it would release it by mid-October.
Last week Shelby told Legal Sports Report, “We’re in the homestretch. Once everything is ready, we will do one final test of the system in the live environment. Hoping to be ready in a couple weeks.”
Shelby said the lottery has almost completed testing and that it is working with financial vendors, banks and payment processers to be ready to fund bettors’ accounts and be able to process their wagers. “[W]e are working now to finalize all of the financial components, and some of them have timelines that are beyond our control. If everything works the way we hope it will, we would launch the week of the seventh.”
Scoreboard will accept bets on professional sports only. The other sports betting operator in the state, the tribal Chinook Winds Casino Resort, does accept bets on college games. It launched six weeks ago. On the other hand, Scoreboard offers the only online sportsbook, at least until the state’s tribes decide they want to update their tribal state gaming compacts.
Oregon was one of four states that wasn’t affected by the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 (PASPA) which the U.S. Supreme Court overturned last year. It was grandfathered in, so it didn’t need new legislation to revive its old sports betting system. It has worked on perfecting its app since that time, with the stated purpose of not releasing it until it was as good as it could be.
The lottery gave an early viewing of the app at the Oregon State Fair several weeks ago. Last week Shelby commented, “Once we do get that final approval and we move everything into the live environment, we’re reserving a couple of days for live testing.” The Lottery won’t announce that the app has gone live but will wait for that fact to become known. “I anticipate that as soon as it is available online and at the app stores, the news will spread organically pretty quickly.” He added, “There is a lot of pent-up demand.”
