Louisiana’s Gaming Control Board issued an order on July 25, 2024, prohibiting licensed sports betting operators from offering college player prop bets, effective August 1.
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ESPN reported that the action made Louisiana one of several recent states to ban prop bets on college athletes. But the national picture is not one rule. The restrictions arrived through regulator orders, state rules, and statutes, and the states did not even ban the same thing.
The 2024 regulator wave
Louisiana’s order was an administrative action, not a bill passed by lawmakers. A 2026 Colorado scholarly paper identifies Louisiana, Maryland, Ohio, and Vermont as states that banned college player props after a public lobbying campaign by NCAA president Charlie Baker in 2024. The wave put the NCAA’s concern about individual college athlete markets before state gambling boards, and Louisiana’s move was one of several recent state bans.
Full bans and partial restrictions
A Capital News Service report from the University of Maryland, published September 10, 2026, says fifteen states, including Maryland, Ohio, Louisiana, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, ban all college player prop bets. The 2026 University of Colorado paper lists twelve states with full bans on NCAA player props: Florida, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Colorado, Arizona, Maine, Mississippi, Oregon, and Virginia. The two lists overlap but not perfectly, a reminder that the patchwork is measured at different moments.
Out-of-state-only rules and unrestricted states
The Colorado paper divides the remaining states. Illinois, Connecticut, Iowa, Delaware, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Washington, Washington D.C., New Mexico, Wisconsin, Montana, Missouri, and Indiana allowed player props on NCAA-sanctioned events only for out-of-state teams. Wyoming, North Carolina, North Dakota, Michigan, Kansas, Kentucky, Arkansas, and Nevada allowed the wagers without special restrictions. The Maryland report describes the same middle category in looser terms: more than a dozen other states allow only certain types of wagers, often restricting bets on college athletes at in-state schools.
Two regulators say no to the NCAA
Not every state board accepted the NCAA’s request. On January 22, 2026, the Missouri Gaming Commission rejected an NCAA request to restrict bets on the performance of college athletes. The commission said the request came after a letter asking state gambling oversight boards to ban college athlete prop bets. Indiana went the same way on September 28, 2026, when the Indiana Gaming Commission voted unanimously against banning bets on the actions of individual college athletes; commissioners said the question belonged to lawmakers in the Indiana General Assembly. The NCAA’s request in Indiana was supported by Purdue University, Butler University, and Indiana University.
Why states said yes, and what the bans were for
The documented justification, in the Maryland report and in state reporting around the 2024 wave, was not simply about betting menu design. The Capital News Service report says state laws aim to limit prop betting and shield players from abuse. Regulators and leagues framed college player props as a student-athlete abuse and integrity problem. The concern is that a wager on one athlete’s performance invites the kind of pressure that a team outcome wager does not.
A hidden distinction that keeps getting lost
A total college player prop ban is not the same as an in-state school restriction. The Colorado paper’s three categories make that explicit: full bans, out-of-state-only allowances, and unrestricted states. A bettor in New York cannot legally wager on a college athlete’s passing yards; a bettor in Iowa can do so only if the athlete plays for an out-of-state school; a bettor in Nevada faces no such restriction. Rolling all of those rules into the word “ban” erases the difference between a legislator’s prohibition and a regulator’s line-drawing.
Some states banned college player props outright, some limited them to out-of-state teams, and some left them untouched, with the policy dispute turning on abuse, integrity, and whether prohibition merely moves the same wagers into markets with no state oversight.