The Oregon Lottery is working to transition its mobile sports betting offering from Scoreboard, an app developed by SBTech, to DraftKings Sportsbook.
Lottery spokesman Matt Shelby told US Gaming Review that the organization is “working with internal Lottery teams and DraftKings to establish a transition plan and schedule,” but added that there was currently no specific timeline for the transition.
“We’re excited for the improved experience for our players,” Shelby said Tuesday. “DraftKings is a well-known provider in the US and their platform should be easier to use. We see benefits for Lottery, too, as the shift to DraftKings means fewer third-party service providers — and fees — and a simpler financial structure for player accounts.”
Shelby added that the Lottery was shifting to DraftKings “because we believe it offers a superior player experience compared to the SBTech platform. In addition, we’re able to leverage the economies of scale that DraftKings brings, reducing the number of third-party contracts needed to support sports betting and player accounts.”
The Oregon Lottery Commission (OLC), which governs the Lottery, voted unanimously to award a contract to DraftKings to “offer managed services supporting sports betting in Oregon” at its meeting on August 26.
“There are a number of business benefits to the Lottery in terms of simplifying some of the structures, and there are player benefits as the experience will be improved on the new platform,” Oregon Lottery Director Barry Pack said at the August 26 meeting. “We have been working through legal issues and are in contract negotiations [with DraftKings].”
The OLC will discuss the transition to DraftKings at its next meeting, scheduled for January 28, 2022.
Oregon Sports Betting Dates Back to 1989
Oregon’s legal sports betting history dates back to 1989, when the Lottery launched Sports Action, a betting platform that allowed wagers on NFL games. When Congress enacted the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) in 1992, lawmakers grandfathered the platform, thereby allowing the Lottery to continue accepting sports wagers.
That changed in 2007, when state lawmakers in Oregon passed HB 3466, a bill that effectively shut down Sports Action. The platform had been derided by the NCAA, and the league pressured Oregon to end it as a prerequisite for the state to host NCAA Men’s Division I basketball tournament games.
Shortly after the Supreme Court ruled PASPA unconstitutional in 2018, the Lottery began looking to resume offering a sports betting product. The Lottery ultimately picked SBTech over rivals Playtech and Scientific Games in March 2019. The Lottery launched the Scoreboard app in October 2019. Delays at the time prevented the Lottery from launching the app at the start of the NFL season.
DraftKings completed its acquisition of SBTech in May 2020.
Lottery Not Expecting to Lose Bettors
During the OLC’s meeting on August 26, Pack revealed that the Lottery “has been in conversations with [DraftKings] ever since [the acquisition of SBTech] about the possibility of moving Scoreboard off of the older SBTech platform and onto the standard DraftKings platform.
“One of the factors that we’re going to have to work on soon is how to fit a transition from one platform to the other while still heading into a busy season of professional sports,” Pack said at the time. “Both the NFL and the NBA are coming up here really soon. We want to make sure that we’re able to seize the right window when we have enough information to know what it’s going to take and how long it’s going to take to make that transition work.”
Pack said players who didn’t already have a DraftKings account would need to set one up in order to ensure a smooth transition once the DraftKings platform was live. He added that the Lottery was not expecting a significant drop in the number of players making online sports wagers.
“We may see some players who choose not to make that transition, but I think that will probably be offset by the improved customer experience and additional wagering options that the DraftKings platform will offer — it’s a lot more familiar to regular US sports bettors. The SBTech platform was more of a European design.”
