Colorado Sports Betting

Colorado sports betting apps total 27 different options, giving bettors the biggest variety than anywhere else in the US. Colorado bettors can also wager in-person at one of 17 different retail sportsbook locations across the state.

The promotions and odds boosters surrounding the 2021-22 NFL Season will continue the Colorado sports betting market’s ongoing success. Plus, college football, college basketball, and the 2022 Super Bowl LVI will make for the hottest competition across the Colorado sportsbooks thus far.

The future is bright for Colorado sportsbooks – which benefits bettors in terms of competitive odds, lucrative promotions, and more.

Summary of the Best Colorado Sports Betting Apps

• DraftKings Sportsbook: Best for DFS Players and Gaming Today promo
• BetMGM: Best for MGM Fans
• Caesars Sportsbook: Best for Vegas Bettors
• BetRivers Sportsbook: Best for Deposit Bonus
• Betfred Colorado: Best for Colorado bettors
• FanDuel Colorado: Best for iOS & Android App
• PointsBet: Best for Risky Bettors
• MaximBet Colorado: Best for lifestyle bettors

Colorado’s 8 Best Sports Betting Apps & Sites

While Colorado has many sportsbooks, it has a clear top eight that are influential in Colorado and beyond. Here’s what bettors need to know about Colorado’s top sportsbook brands.

Recent Colorado Sports Betting Updates

Colorado’s online sports betting industry is full of important industry developements. Here are some of the most important ones at the beginning of fall 2021:  

• September 2021 revenue sets new record – The Colorado Department of Revenue reported $408,314,624.89 in total sports betting handle–nearly $403 million of that was in online sports betting alone.
• Rockies Finish A Rough Season  – The Rockies ended their 2021 season with a loss to the Diamondbacks. A 74-87 season gives the Rockies plenty of room to improve in 2022.
• MaximBet Offers NIL Deal To NCAA Female College Athletes – MaximBet offered every NCAA female college athlete over 21 in Colorado a name, image, and likeness deal. It’s an open offer that requires athletes to engage with MaximBet on social media.
• Tipico Promises Denver Tech Hub – Shortly after launching its sportsbook in Colorado, Tipico announced that it would establish a technology center in Denver. Tipico’s tech center would create 441 new jobs with an average annual wage of $96,000.
• Sports Illustrated Sportsbook Joined Colorado’s Market – Sports Illustrated partnered with 888 to launch a branded sportsbook. It launched in Colorado on September 7, 2021.
• Sporttrade Positioned for Colorado Launch – Sporttrade acquired Momentum Sports and Entertainment, a Denver-based sports betting company, to secure market access for a 2022 launch. If it gets a sports betting license, it will be the first betting exchange in Colorado.

All Colorado Sportsbook Sites

How To Place A Bet In Colorado

Placing a bet in Colorado may be intimidating for new bettors. But it’s made up of a few straightforward steps. Here’s how bettors can make their first bets.

How To Choose A Colorado Sportsbook

There are a few ways to pick a sportsbook. Bettors can find the best odds, best reward programs, or the best welcome bonuses to cash in on. Bettors should decide what’s most important, then pick a sportsbook that matches their priorities.

You can also join as many online sportsbooks in Colorado. This is a relatively easy strategy for shopping around for the best odds to ensure the highest profit margins.

How To Create A Sportsbook Account

Registering for a sportsbook is mostly like registering for any other website, but with more personal information. Bettors must provide their social security numbers to complete their registration. It ensures sportsbooks match payments to individual identities–and don’t pay criminals or excluded bettors.

How To Verify Your Location

Most Colorado sportsbooks do this automatically. Some require bettors to download a geolocation plugin. That keeps sportsbooks from letting out-of-state bettors use their online sportsbooks.

How To Deposit

Find the deposit option near the account section of any sportsbook–often in the top right corner of the screen. Select the desired deposit method, enter the amount, then place your first wager.

How To Place A Bet

Find a line and select the part of the line you want to bet on. Select everything you want to be included in your bet slip, then decide how much you want to wager. Sportsbooks display potential winnings, so bettors don’t have to worry about the math. Just hit submit, and keep your fingers crossed for your teams.

Colorado Legal Sportsbooks

Legal sportsbooks are safer than illegal or unlicensed sportsbooks. Legal platforms are subject to strict industry controls that unlicensed sportsbooks are free to ignore.

Colorado licensed sportsbooks are required to keep a cash reserve to ensure they can pay their bettors. Unlicensed sportsbooks–and small-time bookies–don’t have to worry about effective operations. If they go under, bettors are denied their winnings, and bettors have no legal recourse against them. Colorado licensed sportsbooks offer a security net that’s absent from illegal operations.

But remember, sportsbook winnings are taxable. Bettors report gambling winnings on their tax returns. Sportsbooks also send the IRS a W-2 that details winnings above $600 and wins on 300-1 odds. There’s no way of getting out of reporting sportsbook winnings to the IRS.

Colorado Sports Betting Revenue

According to statistics from the Colorado Department of Revenue, Colorado sports betting handle has remained steady for more than one year. Sports bettors wagered just over $408 million in September 2021, and nearly $403 million of that came from online sports betting. 

Unsurprisingly, professional football brings in more wagers in Colorado than any other sport. However, NBA and NCAA men’s basketball eclipse NFL wagers as leading up to March Madness. NHL and MLB games follow suit, with other sports like motorsports and MMA jostling for remaining market dominance.

How Colorado Compares To Other States

Many states around Colorado haven’t legalized sports betting yet. But there are other successful states that Colorado is outperforming.

For example, Michigan retail sports betting launched March 2020, only to be shut down within days when the pandemic broke out. Online sports betting didn’t launch in Michigan until January 2021. Even though it had a late start, Michigan has become one of the United State’s premier igaming markets. A peek at preliminary revenue shows how sportsbooks succeed in engaging Colorado bettors:

Colorado Sports Betting Successes And Failures

Even though Colorado has fewer potential sports bettors than Michigan, it raked in almost as must betting handle and more tax revenue. Colorado has four major sports franchises in Denver, which makes it a hotbed for sports betting. It also has a slightly higher tax rate than Michigan, which is allowing Colorado to generate more tax revenue from sports betting than Michigan. However, Michigan’s final revenue numbers will tell the full story in January 2022.

Colorado Sports Betting Successes

Colorado took a big step in the right direction by allowing online sports betting and remote registration from the beginning. For example, about 98% of Colorado’s November 2020 wagers were made online. Not only did the online market have time to grow from the beginning, but bettors in any part of the state could create an account and bet on games they were interested in. Requiring bettors to drive to one of Colorado’s three gaming cities to register sportsbook accounts would alienate many bettors.

Colorado also launched retail and mobile sports betting simultaneously. So, it avoided the setback that Michigan sports betting experienced when retail sports betting launched the same week as the COVID-19 shutdowns. It was an unanticipated but lucky break for Colorado. 

Colorado Online Gambling Improvements

Colorado seems to have nailed its sports betting launch. The next step in expanding online gaming would likely be legalizing online casinos. However, online casinos come with more baggage than sports betting.

Putting a casino in every Coloradan’s hand would require controls similar to those imposed by sportsbooks. Tying each account to a bettor’s identity would give bettors the self-exclusion that are critical for maintaining responsible gaming environments. The boost in gaming revenue would have to be balanced against the impact on problem gamblers. But Colorado could pull it off if it strategized ahead of time.

However, that will mean investing in problem gambling treatment. Colorado only allocated $100,000 toward problem gambling treatment and $30,000 toward the national problem gambling helpline. Colorado only has seven licensed problem gambling counselors for an igaming industry that has grown into a $3.2 billion industry. There’s no nice word for a failure that easily avoidable.

Colorado’s Sports Betting Legalization Effort

Sports betting came easily to Colorado. Once the US Supreme Court ruled PASPA unconstitutional in 2018, the Colorado Legislature went to work. In May 2019, it released Proposition DD to be decided during the 2019 election. Proposition DD passed in a 51/49 split. However, that doesn’t reflect Colorado’s usual 60/40 enthusiasm for gaming. Proposition DD passed by a razor-thin margin because it looked too much like a tax bill.    

A New Tax On A New Industry 

The greatest hurdle Colorado’s sports betting bill overcame was the language in its opening line. Colorado’s Taxpayer Bill of Rights requires any bill that introduces a new tax to begin with the following words:

“Shall state taxes be increased by…”

When voters see the words “tax increase,” many of their gut responses are to vote against the measure. However, this new tax didn’t go to Colorado consumers. It was the 10% levied on Colorado sportsbooks. But the misconception that Colorado’s sports betting bill was a new tax on Colorado citizens almost killed Prop DD at the ballot box.

But Colorado’s true feelings about gambling are evident and gaming measures passed before and after Prop DD. In 1990, Coloradans voted to allow casinos in three cities in a 57/43 split. 30 years later, Coloradans voted to allow its casino cities to set their own game and bet limits in a 60/40 split. Coloradans are amenable to gambling expansion. But they dislike tax increases.

Colorado Professional Sports Teams

Denver Broncos

The Denver Broncos are Colorado’s most visible team. In 2016, the Broncos won their third Super Bowl championship. However, Broncos star quarterback, Payton Manning, retired after that game.

The Broncos have been having a hard time since Payton Manning’s retirement. They’ve had a losing season every year since, including an abysmal 5-11 record for 2020-21.

The Broncos’ odds of winning the 2022 Super Bowl 56 at the start of the season was +5,000 at BetMGM Sportsbook Colorado. Those odds have since increased to +15,000. The Broncos have fallen into a familiar pattern of starting strong and ending poorly. For example, after scoring a touchdown in the first quarter of their game against the Ravens, the Broncos looked pretty good. But the Ravens crushed them 23-7. This is not looking like the Broncos’ comeback year.

Denver Nuggets

The Nuggets are Colorado’s professional basketball team, and they’d hit a rough patch too. However, the Nuggets ended the 2020-21 NBA Season with a 47-25 record to place third in the NBA Western Conference. Nikola Jokić handily won the regular-season MVP award, too.

Betting on the NBA MVP is already underway, and PointsBet Colorado, the official betting partner of the Nuggets, has the odds of the team going all the way at +2,000. However, it’s looking like the Nets’ year instead.

PointsBet also lists the odds of Jokić repeating his regular-season MVP award at +1400. Although, repeat MVP awards are uncommon. Giannis Antetokounmpo is the favorite to win MVP this year with +450 odds. 

Colorado Rockies

Anyone who’s been to Coors Field knows how popular the Colorado Rockies are. In July 2021, the Rockies entered a multi-year partnership with WynnBet Sportsbook, cementing a relationship with a multi-state sportsbook. 

The Rockies ended their 2021 season 74-87. They have a lot of room to improve in the offseason, and Rockies fans hope they take that room up. A repeat of 2007 could be right around the corner. But it’s more likely that the Rockies will have to resolve the fallout from trading Nolan Arenado away first.

Colorado College Sports Teams

There are two major college teams in Colorado, and they make one fierce rivalry. The University of Colorado at Boulder has a long rivalry with Colorado State University in Fort Collins. (Anyone lucky enough to attend the annual Rocky Mountain Showdown knows that.) Both schools have popular football teams, too. 

Coloradans can wager on college teams. However, they cannot place prop bets on college games. Colorado’s sports betting bill attempted to protect college game integrity by disallowing wagers that could be affected by an athlete’s choices. It’d be easy for a financially vulnerable student to miss a field goal or two on purpose, then cash in on himself. Rather than solely relying on the schools, the Colorado Legislature shut that door to that behavior. 

Other Sports To Bet On In Colorado

Colorado bettors can bet on many sports besides professional and college sports. Some of these other sports comprised large percentages of Colorado’s total betting handle in July 2021:

• 7.7% on Soccer
• 6.6% on Tennis
• 4.8% on Table Tennis
• 2.9% on Golf

It’s unsurprising to see soccer, golf, and tennis make up significant portions of Colorado’s sports betting revenue outside of the mainstream sports. It may surprise some to see table tennis featured so prominently. However, table tennis grew a large following during the pandemic. Sports bettors have clearly stuck with it ever since.

But Coloradans can find far more obscure sports to bet on than ping-pong. DraftKings offers lines on Turkish Basketball and Herre Handbold Ligaen in Denmark. Those are certainly in Colorado’s ‘other’ category. There’s something in Colorado’s sports betting market for even the most eclectic bettors.

Colorado Sports Betting FAQs

More Resources On Colorado Sports Betting

If you’re curious about the details of Colorado’s sports betting industry, here are some additional resources:

• Supreme Court opinion on PASPA repeal: Why the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of New Jersey and allowed each state to regulate sports betting.  
• Colorado Division of Gaming Sports Betting Rules: These are the rules that Colorado sportsbooks must abide by to earn and keep their sports betting licenses.
• House Bill 19-1327: Better known as Proposition DD, this is the House Bill that Coloradans voted to legalize in the 2019 election.