On Wednesday, Oregon Lottery officials are expected to launch Scoreboard, the mobile sports betting app that will allow residents of the state to wager on sports.
This will be the first time Oregon has had a platform to wager on sports since Sports Action, a paper-based parlay game, was alive and well until 2007. In that format, bettors were only able to do parlays on National Football League games.
Now, the Scoreboard app will evolve with the times and allow bettors to wager on a wide range of sports, just like many of the household names that are on the market now.
“We’re talking about a true mobile-based sportsbook that gives players the opportunity to wager on a variety of pro sports,” said Matt Shelby, a spokesman for the Oregon Lottery.
After quite a few delays, officials went through their final testing over the weekend. They gave six testing bettors – two on each platform (Apple, Android, desktop computer) – $100 each to test the Scoreboard app by wagering on games in real time, and even allowed them to keep the winnings from those wagers. All of this was done to ensure that customers won’t have any trouble when depositing, withdrawing or betting money.
Oregon Lottery director Barry Pack was there on Monday with the project’s app team, giving the final approval for Wednesday’s launch date.
“We’re not anticipating any surprises,” Shelby said.
The Scoreboard app was supposed to be ready in time for the start of the NFL season. However, the start time was delayed in order to make sure everything was perfected and no issues would arise once launched.
Oregon will now be the eighth state to have live betting as part of its services, with 12 having sports betting options via mobile devices.
Partnership
The Oregon Lottery partnered with SBTech, a privately run company that mainly deals with sports betting services. This is also the same company that runs the Churchill Downs sports betting operations, while also having a partnership with the Golden Nugget Casino in New Jersey.
“A number of competitors we looked at were large lottery companies that also did sports betting. So, it was a component of their portfolio. With SBTech, this was their bread and butter and really what they do,” Shelby said.
In addition to offering numerous types of bets on Scoreboard, the app/Oregon Lottery have a sponsorship agreement with the in-state Portland Trail Blazers of the NBA. The Trail Blazers are the state’s only professional team within the four major sports, though the Portland Timbers of Major League Soccer is a very popular team with Oregon residents.
“The addition of sports betting is exciting, and we look forward to exploring potential opportunities to expand our partnership,” said Chris McGown, CEO of the Trail Blazers.
An interesting aspect of the betting app is that bettors won’t be able to have more than $250,000 in their accounts – or even place a bet of more than $250,000. Not every bet will be reviewed, but SBTech does have the authority to review individual bets and anything that looks to be awkward or needs additional screening.
