Colorado Is Racing To Legalize Sports Betting

• CO HB 1327 is speeding through to legalize sports betting.
• Voters will have a say if Colorado will open sportsbooks.
• The action won’t start until May 2020 at the earliest.

DENVER – Colorado lawmakers are racing to pass a sports betting bill as the legislative session ends on Friday.

Racing Towards The Finish Line

CO HB 1327 was introduced about two weeks ago. During that time, lawmakers have run the bill through the House and it is now going into different State Senate committees for consideration. CO HB 1327 has already passed in the Senate’s Finance and Appropriations Committee.

Although the bill is not at the finish line just yet, lawmakers are expecting that there shouldn’t be anything that prevents the bill from passing in the Senate. The only factor against the bill is that the legislative session in Colorado ends on Friday.

Voters Get The Final Say

Assuming that the sports betting bill ends up passing, that isn’t the final step to legalize sports betting. The bill must first go to the voters of Colorado before any sportsbooks can be opened in the state.

Colorado has something called the Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR) that the state must adhere to. What TABOR does is mandate that any and all tax increases must be decided by the voters of Colorado to be implemented. Since the sports betting will be implementing new taxes, the voters will have the final say if sportsbooks are going to open in the state.

This could go either way. In the past, voters have rejected different attempts to expand gambling in the state. In 2014 Amendment 68 was defeated by 70 percent of the voters. This prevented racetrack casinos from opening in Colorado. In the end, the voters will get exactly they want.

What Sports Betting Could Look Like

If CO HB 1327 clears all hurdles necessary to legalize sports betting, sports betting is going to be statewide. Although licenses are going to mainly be distributed in three cities in the state, mobile sports betting will be a statewide affair. Sportsbook operators in Colorado will be allowed to provide sports wagering through the internet and mobile devices. Mobile betting would be alongside the potential 33 different retail sportsbooks in the state.

The bill will also implement a 10 percent tax on all sports betting revenue. The bill says that the tax money collected from sports betting will fund the implementation of the state water plan and other public purposes. It was amended that six percent of that tax will be set aside annually to help assist people negatively affected by sports betting.

This means that people who could be potentially harmed from Colorado sports betting will submit an application to the State Treasury to have the department assist them with their losses. Although it is not specified just yet what sports betting hardships qualify for the refund, it could be something like a gambler used their rent money to bet on a Nuggets game.

Although there is still a long path for sports betting to be legalized in Colorado, lawmakers need to clear the hurdle this coming Friday. If they do that and the voters decide that they do want to have sports betting, action should start on May 2020.

News tags: CO HB 1327 | Colorado | Colorado sports betting