The wide-ranging Colorado responsible gambling and sports betting protections bill passed through its first House committee on Monday evening, as its sponsors insisted it is not intended to be “antagonistic” to the industry.
The bipartisan Senate Bill 26-131, which passed the Colorado Senate last week, was advanced by a 9-2 vote by the House Finance Committee on Monday.
An amendment made before the vote removed a page-and-a-half-long legislative declaration from the bill, an introductory section that devoted numerous lines to presenting evidence that sports betting has caused harms such as a spike in problem gambling.
“Through stakeholder [discussion] and conversations with my co-prime sponsor, we want to be clear that we’re not trying to be antagonistic to the industry,” said the bill’s primary House sponsor and committee chairman Rep. Steven Woodrow during a hearing on Monday evening. “We understand that voters approved [sports betting]. Just as a general matter, we appreciate the work that’s been done to reach a deal on this.” The amendment was adopted by voice vote.
Colorado legislators toned down bill
The bill’s other House sponsor, Rep. Dan Woog, noted during the hearing that the current form of SB 26-131 does five key things:
- Caps the number of deposits that a single bettor can make via a single sportsbook in a 24-hour period at six, which Woog opined “is not a restrictive number for a recreational bettor”.
- Bans the use of credit cards and other buy-now-pay-later methods of account funding, in line with the state’s retail betting rules. “A bet placed today should be paid for with money the bettor actually has today,” added Woog. At least six of the biggest online sportsbooks already ban credit cards nationwide.
- Bans push notifications and unsolicited text messages that encourage users to place bets or deposit more money, which Woog said “are designed to interrupt a person’s day and put a bet in front of them at the moment they are most likely to take it”.
- Limits advertising in places and via media where a majority of the audience could be reasonably expected to be under the state’s legal sports betting age.
- Requires operators to share betting data with the state “to ensure that policy decisions are grounded in evidence”.
Previous iterations of the bill proposed stricter measures, such as a ban on prop bets, stringent limits on daytime and in-game broadcast advertising, and rules that would have prevented sportsbooks from limiting sharp bettors. Those measures were all scratched via amendments during the Senate before the bill was sent to the House.
Supporters of the bill include the Campaign for Fairer Gambling, Healthier Colorado, the American Institute for Boys and Men, the Problem Gambling Coalition of Colorado, and a range of community, faith, youth, and medical organizations.
The Sports Betting Alliance (SBA) of FanDuel, DraftKings, BetMGM, Fanatics, and bet365 (the latter of which has its U.S. headquarters in Denver) all testified in opposition to the bill in writing and/or in-person or online during Senate committee hearings, arguing that it would drive Colorado bettors towards the illegal market.
Coloradans didn’t know what was coming, says sponsor
While Woodrow, Woog, and other committee members noted that Coloradans’ choice to legalize sports betting via ballot vote in 2019 should be respected, Woodrow suggested that the 2026 version of mobile sports wagering is not necessarily what anyone had in mind seven years ago.
“This is not a ban on sports betting and it is not an attempt to relitigate the 2019 ballot measure that legalized it,” Woodrow stressed. “Coloradans made that decision, and our job today isn’t to second-guess them. Our job is to make sure the product they were promised is the product they actually got. Because Colorado was one of the first states in the country to legalize online sports betting, it wasn’t clear what it would actually look like once the apps were just a click away on the phones of millions of Coloradans.”
Woodrow called the bill the most comprehensive package of sports betting consumer protections introduced in any state since the repeal of PASPA in 2018.
“This is not an anti-business piece of legislation,” he added. “Sports betting will continue in Colorado. State tax revenue will continue to flow to the water projects as promised. What this bill does is it challenges the most problematic features of the products that we know cause the most harm, and we try to bring that in line with what a reasonable Colorado in 2019 would have expected.
“Colorado has led on public health policy before, and we have an opportunity to lead again.”
Would SB 131 get the job done effectively?
Not all members of Woodrow’s committee were in agreement. Rep. Ryan Gonzalez said before voting “no” on the bill that he had concerns about the proposed changes.
“I think this could potentially lead to a heavily supervised [market] and maybe failing to meaningfully address problem gambling at the source,” he said. “I think we’re potentially constraining the legal market and driving consumers towards illegal and offshore operators that offer no safeguards, no oversight and no benefit to Colorado taxpayers. So I think it could result in less transparency, less revenue, and greater risk to consumers, precisely the opposite of what was promised when sports betting was legalized.”
Ultimately, members voted to move SB 131 forward to the House Appropriations Committee. Colorado’s legislative session is scheduled to end on May 13, leaving little spare time for the bill to make it through the House and to the governor’s desk.
“Colorado has led on public health policy before, and we have an opportunity to lead again.”
