CO Ute Tribe Chairman Manuel Hearts is asking the Legislature to allow the state’s mobile devices
Legal sports betting began in Colorado in May 2020, and its law requires sports bets to be placed at authorized, legal sportsbooks and operators, but it prevents the state’s Ote Tribe from offering mobile sports betting statewide like commercial casinos can. .
It’s a costly oversight that Ute Mountain Chairman Manuel Hurts believes needs to be corrected as he recently took his home tribe’s case to the Colorado Legislature, according to sports reporter Ollie Ring of basketballinsiders.com (BBI).
Chairman Hearts asked lawmakers a simple question, according to BBI: Why wasn’t his tribe consulted when the 2019 CO Legislature put a measure on the ballot that year that approved online sports betting in a way that kept his tribe out of the statewide cellular market .
Achieving some level of cooperation between local and state leaders and commercial casinos is difficult, but Chairman Baker recently said in a speech:
“We can’t always agree on every issue, but sometimes it’s better to disagree and work together. It is cooperation and the desire to work together that makes us all stronger.
It’s money, of course.
The tribe claims it lost money, the commercial casinos say the losses are insignificant
Once PASPA was struck down by the US Supreme Court in 2018, each state was allowed to legalize, regulate and tax its own sports betting market, and since Colorado’s launch in the mid-2020s, millions of dollars have been wagered and subsequently generated. earned
At the time, commercial casinos in Colorado were allowed to offer mobile gambling throughout the state, while tribes could only offer their own to visitors to tribal lands. The difference, Chairman Hearts told the Colorado Sun, costs his tribe potential revenue, saying:
“Time is money and since then in 2019 we have lost so much money in sports betting.”
However, the BBI reports that commercial gaming analysts argue that “the sports betting revenue lost by the two tribal properties is relatively insignificant and therefore does not warrant further investigation.”
Colorado is home to professional teams in four major leagues, including the Denver Broncos of the NFL, the Denver Nuggets of the NBA, the Colorado Rockies of the MLB, and the Colorado Rapids of the MLS, all of which breed sports fans who like to invest money. their favorite players and teams.
And that hefty handle means a lot of tax revenue for the state.
Colorado’s legal sports betting market has generated $9.7 billion, $32 million in taxes
Colorado is home to more than 5.8 million people, and many of them enjoy gambling, so much so that since the launch of this legal sports betting market, it has generated $9.7 billion, which in turn has generated $637 million in sportsbook revenue .
Taxed, that money has added up to $32 million in tax revenue, enough money to make the Otter Tribe’s complaints seem valid, a mistake that could be corrected during this legislative session, which began in early January and runs through the end of May.
In the meantime, these more than 30 commercial casinos will continue to offer the state’s mobile sports gambling to Colorado bettors who are now enjoying the NFL postseason, NBA and NCAA basketball and spending millions of dollars and having fun.
It’s an ongoing battle for the Ute Tribe, so keep checking back for all the latest news and updates on this story.
