“Scoreboard acts just exactly like a sports book that you would find in Las Vegas,” said Chuck Baumann, senior public affairs officer for
Oregon Lottery. “It’s the first time that the lottery has offered a
game that people can purchase online, our first e-lottery type
offering,” he said.
Users can establish an online account where they will place wagers and collect winnings. The service is geo-fenced only to Oregon, meaning
it can only be played by people within the state. It’s also not
accessible on tribal lands.
Regardless of its regional restrictions, Baumann said, people don’t need to be Oregon residents to use the app.For example, if someone
travels into Oregon from a neighboring state, they can place their bets
on the app, and go back home to monitor their wins and losses.
“That is very different than anything the lottery has ever offered,” Baumann said. Oregon Lottery had another sports betting game called
Sports Action, specifically for NFL games, but players had to go to a
retailer to buy a physical “play slip,” Baumann said.
That game ended in 2007, after the National Collegiate Athletic Association said it would not let a NCAA men’s basketball tournament be
held in the state if sports betting was legal.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that states can decide for themselves whether to legalize sports betting. “When the Supreme Court
ruled that sports betting was OK across the country, the NCAA issued a
statement that it would adhere to that as well,” Baumann said. In the
more than a decadelong absence of Sports Action, Baumann said, “folks
have been looking forward to another game just like that.”
Once a user creates a new account on Scoreboard, players will be able to wager a maximum of $250,000 using the game. Baumann said
because of the nature of Scoreboard, there are ways to assist people who
could be dealing with gambling addictions.
“With all of our other games, it’s anonymous play. But, with Scoreboard, you’re going to go in and establish an account with your
name and all those sorts of things,” he said. “With that, we have the
ability, as the player does, to monitor, what you’re winning and what
you’re losing.Players can set limits on what they want to wager as well
as a limit on the maximum amount of money they want to lose.
“If there’s a level the player has reached that’s above what they’ve set, we have the ability to email and contact them and say, ‘Do you
understand that you’re at your limit?’” Baumann said.
In addition, he said the lottery will continue marketing gambling treatment programs to its users. In its first year, Scoreboard is
projected to raise nearly $5 million for the state. In three years, that
total is projected to be $37 million. Though, that projected revenue
could be lower than expected as the game was originally slated to
release before the start of the professional football season.
“It’s difficult to say if there will be a loss due to the later-than-projected start of the game,” Baumann said. “We will have a
much more concrete idea about the accuracy of the projections after a
month or two of having the game available.”
