Legal Colorado Sports Betting Murmurs Through Legislature

• Legislators have begun to open talks about legal sports betting in Colorado.
• Though not written, the bill would permit sports betting at casinos, horse tracks, and through mobile devices.
• Estimations have revenue from sports betting hitting anywhere between $100 – $400 million.

DENVER – Though no bill has been filed, the talks of potentially bringing legal sports betting to Colorado are starting to heat up.

House Majority Leader, Alec Garnett (D- Denver), is the reason for the murmuring.

“We’ve been working the last couple of months with stakeholders trying to build what a legal sports gambling framework would look like in Colorado.”

Garnett, who said the bill isn’t ready to be shown, explained it would involve a voter referendum for Colorado residents in the upcoming election. Voters would be required to approve the measure since TABOR laws require any tax increase to be run past the residents.

The details include allowing the “mountain casinos”, horse tracks, and an online platform to serve the betting needs of Colorado. But Garnett said his main focus is mobile. “Nobody does this in person anymore. This is all done on your phone.”

The Colorado Sports Betting Revenue Debate

Estimations of the money to be earned from legalizing the industry have fluctuated… vastly.

In a report paid for by the Arapahoe Park Racetrack conducted by the Innovation Group, sports betting revenue could exceed $360 million by 2023.

If race tracks and their off-track betting locations were to be removed from the report, a third of the revenue would be removed as well.

The report shows the need for sports betting at not only casinos but at the track locations as well. Being paid for by one of the tracks, the point was made that the mountain casinos are roughly an hour or more outside of the main cities.

CEO of Monarch Casino & Resort, David Farahi, still believes the study’s numbers are “wildly aggressive”. Aside from running the Monarch Casino in Black Hawk, Farahi also runs the Atlantis Casino in Reno, who has been operating a sportsbook for quite some time.

Farahi explained that even a state like Nevada, who has held a monopoly over Colorado sports betting during the last two and half decades, had revenue hit $250 million in 2017.

“You have all these people trying to get their hands in the sportsbook or sports betting cookie jar. And they think there are giant cookies in that cookie jar and really, it’s just a lot of crumbs.”

Other reports, as told by the former Executive Director of Colorado’s Department of Revenue, Mike Hartman, show the state receiving “somewhere between $100 million and $200 million from tax revenue”.

The real question that comes into the debate is not how many operators will provide sports betting outlets but rather how large the industry in Colorado should be.

“We don’t want it too big that we can’t regulate it properly,” Garnett said, but “we don’t want it too small that the black market continues to exist.”

Either way, the change isn’t going to happen overnight and no matter the size of the revenue, it won’t solve all of the state’s budget problems.

“If they’re doing it for budget reasons, they’ll probably be disappointed,” said David Schwartz, the Center for Gaming Research at UNLV’s Director.

The 72nd General Assembly for Colorado is scheduled to adjourn on Friday, May 3, setting the legal sports betting deadline at 6 weeks. Upon the bill’s filing and passage (with voter approval), Colorado could be legally betting on Super Bowl 2020 from all around the state.

News tags: Arapahoe Park Racetrack | Colorado | Colorado sports betting | Monarch Casino