Could legal sports gambling become a reality in Colorado?

Could legal sports gambling come to Colorado?

It’s a possibility after the Supreme Court reversed an act that didn’t allow anyone, except for Las Vegas, to regulate sports betting.

“If Colorado wanted to it could legalize gambling on sports,” Steve Smith, a managing partner with Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner, LLP.

Smith specializes in sports law. He said the possibilities of legal sports betting, are pretty much any game, anywhere, not just the major leagues.

“Obviously high school sports would probably be excluded from it, College sports and university’s you don’t know if they could be included,” Smith said.

In Colorado, it would be a change of law and a vote of the people to make it happen.

Peggi O’Keefe, the executive director of The Colorado Gaming Association said they’d like to see it limited to the gaming towns of Cripple Creek, Black Hawk, and Central City.

“I think this is something we want to make sure doesn’t pop up on every street corner or in people’s backyards,” O’Keefe said.

One of the big questions if Colorado were to legalize sports gambling is how it would be handled on mobile devices.

“Do we really want to have that in our state and in our country, where people are betting constantly and are we ready for the social problems that might come from that?” Smith said. “I think that’s a question we will all have to debate before we make any new laws.”

O’Keefe said gambling from your seat at the stadium, would be a possibility with an app.

“But it will likely be affiliated with those three gambling towns and the casinos that already exist in those towns,” O’Keefe.

But it’s a ways off before bets on the next pitch become a reality in Colorado.

O’Keefe said legislators have told her they’re interested in looking at regulating sports gaming in the state, but as the last legislative session just ended, and the deadline for an initiative has passed, it will be a few years off before it could be a reality.