The $10.5 million ticket was sold at a King Soopers in Conifer, Colorado Lottery officials announced Thursday. The cash value of the prize is $5.25 million.

The winning numbers were 4, 9, 12, 22, 26 and 34, and players have a one in 3.8 million chance of winning, according to the agency.

Coloradans spent more than $800 million on lottery tickets last year, with the revenue going toward cash prizes and , including parks, open spaces and youth programs.

Previous big-ticket winners have included a $3.3 million ticket sold in Broomfield in February and a “Lucky for Life” ticket sold in Lafayette worth $5.75 million in December.

A King Soopers in Castle Pines sold the winning $500,000 Powerball Double Play ticket, Colorado Lottery officials said Tuesday. The lucky numbers 4, 23, 31, 32, 57 and Powerball 23 were drawn Monday.

Double Play is a separate drawing from the main Powerball drawing. For an extra $1, players have another chance at matching their numbers in a second drawing, according to the state.

Players can win up to $10 million on Double Play, and the odds of winning the $500,000 prize for matching 5 numbers is roughly 1 in 11.7 million.

The overall and will be the eighth-largest prize in Powerball history. The . The largest Powerball jackpot was $2 billion in 2022.

��fund programs for parks, wildlife and school construction.

The bipartisan bill — — was introduced earlier this year with the intention of slowing gambling habits after a group of politicians heard warnings about increasing gambling addiction since Colorado legalized online sports betting in May 2020.

But mounting pressure from the gambling industry and a state budget crunch led the bill’s sponsors to remove the section that would have banned bets on individual athletes’ performances, which are the most popular wagers for gamblers because they come with higher payouts and are a big moneymaker for the sportsbooks because they come with higher odds.

Sen. Matt Ball, a Denver Democrat and one of the bill’s sponsors, said prop bets and the ability to bet on every pitch in a baseball game or every pass in a football game are like having “slot machines in your pocket.”

“That perpetual availability is something that is very addictive,” he said.

Ball agreed the bill had a better chance of passing this session if the prop bet prohibition was removed, but he vowed to revive the legislative debate again. He wants to have a more holistic conversation about prop bets and parlays, and how they trigger compulsive gambling habits.

In prop bets, a gambler could bet on how many points Denver Nuggets guard Jamal Murray might score in a game or how many touchdown passes Denver Broncos quarterback Bo Nix might throw. Gamblers can place these bets before a game starts, and they can bet mid-game on things such as whether a Major League Baseball pitcher will throw a ball or a strike.

Sports-betting apps also allow gamblers to combine multiple prop bets to form parlays, which further increase odds in favor of the sportsbooks, but are wildly popular with gamblers.

Colorado already bans prop bets on college athletes’ performances.

Public health advocates believe prop bets lead to more addictive behavior, especially since gamblers can place the bets mid-game. Ball also worried that prop bets could impact the integrity of games because the high stakes put pressure on athletes and lead to harassment from gamblers when they fail.

The prop bet prohibition was removed, in part, because of the fiscal impact, Ball said. Tax revenue from sports gambling pays for water projects across the state.

The elimination of prop bets would decrease revenue by more than $2 million per year, according to the produced by the Legislative Council Staff. With the prop bet prohibition removed, the predicted revenue loss from the bill is an estimated $800,000.

Ball and public health advocates believe the bill still can help curb addiction.

The bill would also attempt to slow gambling habits by eliminating credit card usage on sports-betting apps, limiting the number of deposits a person can make into an account, curtailing television commercials and banning push notifications to cellphones from betting companies such as DraftKings and FanDuel.

It would also require sportsbooks to provide data to the state in an attempt to determine certain metrics, such as gambler demographics.

Joshua Ewing, executive director of , an advocacy group that pushes for better health policies in the state, said the remaining sections of the bill still could have an impact on gambling addiction.

“Those are all really important pieces that get at those problem gaming aspects,” Ewing said. “We wanted to be as strong as possible, but we still think the bill would be one of the strongest in the nation.”

The bill is expected to be debated on the Senate floor on Monday.

Two other bills addressing gambling are pending before the legislature.

would have barred the from developing an internet lottery scratch-off game, but that provision was removed. Now the bill only prohibits lottery players from buying tickets with credit cards. Critics, including Colorado’s casino operators, say the Lottery’s online scratch-off games will become online casinos rather than traditional lottery games.

would restructure the bodies that regulate gambling in Colorado. It would repeal the , which regulates horse racing, and put its duties under the supervision of the Colorado Limited Gaming Control Commission, which oversees casinos and sportsbooks.

The gaming control commission’s size would be expanded under the bill.

DO YOU HAVE A GAMBLING PROBLEM?

The Problem Gambling Coalition of Colorado helps people who are addicted to gambling. Call 303-955-4682 or visit��cogamblerhelp.org��for help.

The Denver Post reports on the impacts of gambling in Colorado and wants to hear your stories about betting on sports. Please contact reporter Noelle Phillips at nphillips@denverpost.com if you are willing to talk about your experience.

The winning ticket was sold at the Loaf ‘N Jug at 102 N. Rubey Drive in Golden, Colorado Lottery officials said in a Thursday post on social media. Colorado was the only state with a $1 million winner from Wednesday night’s drawing.

The ticket just missed the Powerball but matched all five numbers: 13, 21, 17, 43 and 45.

An from a 200X scratch ticket in March, according to the state.

help fund parks, trails, open spaces and recreation projects statewide.

The bipartisan bill — — would also attempt to slow down gambling habits by eliminating credit card usage on sports-betting apps, limiting the number of deposits a person can make into an account, curtailing television commercials and banning push notifications to cellphones from betting companies such as DraftKings and FanDuel.

“Frankly, the more I looked into it, the more I became really, really alarmed by everything that has happened as a consequence of legalized sports betting and, in my view, placing very few restrictions on it,” said , D-Denver, one of the bill’s sponsors.

The responsible gaming bill’s introduction sets up a potentially heated debate in the state legislature as public health advocates push for more regulation of gambling while deep-pocketed companies fight to keep growing revenue. An organization representing sports-betting companies called the bill’s provisions “draconian.”

Ball, who is sponsoring the bill with , R-Sterling, said the rapid growth of sports betting in Colorado is causing unexpected problems — including financial debt — across the state, and the legislature needs to move to protect people and the integrity of professional and collegiate sports.

The bill is sponsored in the House by , R-Frederick, and Rep. , D-Denver.

Ball cited studies that show more than half of 18-to-22-year-olds have engaged in some form of sports betting, and surveys of high school students that report that between 60% and 80% have gambled for money within the previous 12 months.

“We just didn’t know what we didn’t know,” Ball said of Colorado’s quick entry into legalized sports betting. “It’s just exploded and it’s happened very fast. I think we can see the harm that’s happened very clearly.”

Colorado voters legalized sports betting in 2019 after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a law that had prohibited states from allowing it. It was one of the first states to launch online sportsbooks in May 2020, just after the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the country, including putting a pause on most sports. But the state’s residents quickly took to sports betting apps as the world returned to normal.

The amount Colorado bettors have wagered has steadily increased each year, with people betting more than $6 billion on sports in 2025. At the same time, the number of people calling the state’s��problem gambling hotline has risen, too. The hotline averaged about 350 calls per month in 2025, according to the .

‘Smart policy, not prohibition’

Joshua Ewing, executive director of , an advocacy group that pushes for better health policies in the state, said new studies are showing a growing rate of addiction among young men and boys who gamble, and addiction is causing financial debt, strained relationships and emotional stress.

“It����ap not about rolling back voter-approved betting. It����ap about guardrails,” Ewing said of the bill. “The goal is smart policy, not prohibition.”

The sports-betting industry is prepared to push back on the legislation.

Joe Maloney, president of the , which represents the largest sports-betting companies in the United States, including FanDuel, DraftKings and BetMGM, said eliminating or proposition bets — also known as prop bets — would push sports betting back into the illegal, offshore market.

“Colorado should seize this moment to strengthen its state-regulated market — not hand it back to illegal operators or chase bettors to federally regulated platforms,” Maloney wrote in a statement. “This proposal undermines the very consumer protections it claims to advance, rewarding actors who openly flout Colorado law and contribute nothing to the state’s communities by way of tax revenues.”

In an interview with The Denver Post, Maloney said the bill included “draconian proposals” that could not only push gamblers away from the regulated market but also could reduce Colorado’s tax revenue.

“Proposals such as this one threaten both of those things squarely,” he said.

Tax revenue in Colorado has grown every year since sports betting became legal in May 2020. The collected $23.5 million in the first seven months of 2025, according to the most recent data available.

Maloney said prop bets are popular with bettors because of the decades-long popularity of fantasy sports, in which people study individual athletes and their performances to win leagues in which they compete with friends and family.

“We have a betting community that is very fluent in individual outcomes,” Maloney said.

How prop bets work

Prop bets are the moneymakers for sports-betting apps because they come with higher odds. In those bets, a gambler could bet on whether Denver Nuggets star Nikola Jokic will score 30 or more points in a game or whether Denver Broncos quarterback Bo Nix will throw more than one touchdown.

Sports-betting apps also allow gamblers to make multiple prop bets at one time to form parlays, which further increase odds in favor of the sportsbooks, but are wildly popular with gamblers.

For example, Bet365 on Wednesday offered a parlay bet called “Joker x Jamal,” where a gambler would win if the Nuggets’ Jokic and Jamal Murray both scored more than 20 points, and if Murray had more than 10 assists and Jokic grabbed more than 10 rebounds. A $10 wager would have won $100 if all four things happened in the Nuggets game against the Celtics.

That bet was a losing proposition. Murray left Wednesday night’s game in the first quarter because of an illness, scoring only two points and logging one assist. Jokic reached both goals.

Colorado already prohibits prop bets on college athletes, but Ball and the bill’s other sponsors want to prohibit them on pro sports, too, because of the temptation among athletes to take bribes to influence outcomes for gamblers.

For example, two Cleveland Guardians pitchers were in November by the U.S. Department of Justice for accepting bribes to rig pitches so corrupt gamblers could win big bets on their performances.

Curbs on TV ads, push alerts

The bill also aims to curb the barrage of television advertisements and phone notifications that people see during sporting events.

It would prohibit advertisements for sports-betting apps between 8 a.m. and 10 p.m. It would also ban the betting companies from sending push notifications or text messages to gamblers that solicit bets or deposits.

Revenue from Colorado’s sports-betting market goes to the Colorado Water Conservation Board, which awards grants to various projects around the state that protect and conserve lakes, streams and groundwater.

Ball did not anticipate that the bill would impact those projects, saying sports gambling continues to grow in Colorado every year.

“Any impact that this has on revenue of the sports-betting industry is going to be vastly outweighed by the growth of the industry and how much more tax money is coming into Colorado year over year,” he said.

This is the second bill filed this month that addresses gambling in Colorado. Last week, a group of legislators filed a bill that would block the Colorado Lottery Commission’s plans to open online lottery ticket sales.

A bipartisan group of Colorado legislators on Friday��filed a bill to block online lottery ticket sales even as the formulates its plan with the support of Gov. Jared Polis.

The online ticket sales are necessary to increase revenue for the lottery’s mission to fund outdoor recreation and wildlife, Colorado Lottery director Tom Seaver said.

​​”Governor Polis continues looking for opportunities to expand the lottery, which allows Coloradans to support great organizations like , which funds parks, trails, recreation, open space, wildlife projects and increases access to the outdoors,” Polis spokesman Eric Maruyama said in a statement. “The governor is supportive of increasing consumer convenience and internet freedom.”

The lottery also plans to reverse a longstanding policy that prohibits people from buying tickets with credit cards at retail outlets, such as convenience stores, as it rolls out the online ticket sales, Seaver said.

The bill, , would prohibit that change because Coloradans do not need to go into credit card debt while playing lottery games, said Sen. Jeff Bridges, D-Greenwood Village, who is one of the bill’s sponsors.

The legislators also believe their bill is necessary to prevent people from becoming addicted to gambling, a problem that has grown since Colorado legalized sports betting in 2020. Lottery tickets sold online in other states resemble web-based slot machines, Bridges said.

Online gambling involving traditional casino games such as slot machines, blackjack and roulette is often referred to as iGaming.

“If you look at what these online scratch ticket companies do, it is iGaming,” Bridges said. “The state not only should not be participating in that, but they shouldn’t be pushing it with more than $10 million in advertising. This is iGaming sponsored by the state to the benefit of the state at a time when Coloradans can’t afford to live here.”

However, the lottery needs to increase revenue to support Great Outdoors Colorado and other programs that protect and promote outdoor recreation, Seaver said. He also said that lottery players are asking for more convenient ways to play the games.

“We can’t sit still and meet our numbers,” Seaver said. “We have to keep growing in order to meet the needs of our recipients.”

Great Outdoors Colorado, a trust fund created in 1992, receives 50% of the lottery’s profits to fund outdoor preservation projects. The receives another 40% of lottery sales, and gets a 10% cut.

But the funding structure for Great Outdoors Colorado is the primary reason the lottery wants to boost sales, Seaver said.

The amount of money Great Outdoors Colorado receives is capped each year, based on a formula involving the Consumer Price Index, and the surplus money is doled out to various organizations, including the for school construction and the for youth programs.

In 2025, however, the cap was not met, and those other groups did not receive lottery funding.

The Colorado Lottery needs to increase revenue, and Seaver sees online sales as a way to get there.

“We have to keep growing in order to meet the needs of recipients,” he said.

The lottery wants to open its online ticket sales by selling the products already offered, including Lotto, Powerball and Mega Millions tickets, as well as various scratch-off games, Seaver said. The plans are still in the developmental phase, so it is unclear exactly how those products would be sold online and delivered to customers.

It is also too early to determine whether the lottery would offer digital scratch-ticket sales and what those games would look like.

“We are a long way from saying what kind of game we would bring,” Seaver said. “From my perspective, you start slow with what kind of games you are going to bring and then progress.”

Back-door path to legalized iGaming?

However, critics are warning that Colorado’s creation of online lottery ticket sales could create a back-door entry to online, casino-style gambling, and that addictive behavior will increase because people can play on their cellphones while charging their credit cards.

Those critics point toward the and its online games, such as Lucky Coins Disco Pig and Pantheon of Olympus Lightning. In those games, players enter a credit card and can play as many times as they want, punching buttons to line up icons such as Greek coins or disco balls to win money. The games feature cartoon drawings and music.

The supports the Colorado bill because the group opposes online casino games, said Oliver Barie, the organization’s government relations director.

The association, which is backed by traditional casinos, including Monarch Casino in Black Hawk, and the state’s casino towns, fears an online lottery will lead to state-sponsored digital casino games.

“We’ve seen other states, where oftentimes the first step is you have online lottery sales,” Barie said. “Depending on the iLottery platform, you could have a traditional ticket on your phone or games that look and feel a lot like a slot machine. That����ap where our concerns are.”

Barie conducted by the association that showed a majority of respondents in Colorado opposed a lottery expansion, purchases charged to credit cards and 18-year-olds playing lottery games online.

Internet casino games often involve bright colors, music and cartoon characters that create a “stimulus reward loop” that increases the risk of addiction, said Jamie Glick, president of the .

“Essentially, what that means is the quicker you can interact with a game and get a response back, the higher the likelihood of addiction,” Glick said. “Those games, just from an addiction standpoint, brain chemistry standpoint, they play like iGaming.”

Glick also said he is concerned that online lottery games could appeal to children because they resemble video games. Online games often ask players to scan driver’s licenses to verify their ages, but Glick said young people find ways to circumvent those rules.

“We certainly don’t think there should be any gambling that could attract younger users,” he said.

Finally, allowing credit card sales increases the risk of addiction because it makes it easier for people to keep playing, Glick said.

“One thing I’m not neutral on is gambling on credit, just because that’s one of the biggest risk factors in developing a gambling problem and also disrupting your life through gambling, when you’re gambling with money that you don’t have,” he said.

Seaver said that the lottery would create guardrails and limits for people playing online.

“We’re not the first to the dance on this, and that’s fine,” Seaver said. “We wanted to see how other states managed the product and responsible gambling over the past few years.”

The lottery will not introduce credit card sales until a comprehensive player health program is established, said Meghan Dougherty, a Colorado Lottery spokeswoman.

“At the same time, when this option is available, it will allow players to use the payment method of their choice,” she said.

Lottery tickets already available online

Colorado residents already can buy state lottery tickets online through third-party vendors, known in the industry as couriers.

Four companies offer online ticket sales in Colorado. Their operations are similar to how DoorDash and Instacart allow people to order food and groceries over their phones or computers, except people do not receive a physical ticket at their doorsteps.

The Colorado Lottery does not license or regulate couriers, Dougherty said. The couriers have agreements with brick-and-mortar stores, and those stores are subject to rules that allow them to partner with couriers.

On , one of the companies doing business in Colorado, players pay a convenience fee on their purchases. For example, Colorado residents on Friday could buy a $5 Orange Cash scratch ticket for $6.50 or a $2 Powerball ticket for $2.50.

Lotto.com owns a convenience store on Wadsworth Boulevard called Players Cafe, said Tom Metzger, the website’s chief executive officer.

There, people can buy lottery tickets or traditional convenience store items. The online sales are routed to that store, where employees scan tickets sold at the store and then send pictures to players to confirm their purchases and log their serial numbers.

If someone buys a scratch ticket, Lotto.com puts a “digital cover” over the numbers so the player can simulate scratching off the latex of a paper ticket with their fingers.

Prize money is deposited into an online wallet, and anyone who wins $600 or more still has to pick up the paper ticket to cash their winnings.

Lotto.com targets people who do not ordinarily play the lottery at convenience stores, Metzger said. The company advertises online and tries to lure people who Metzger describes as “incremental players.” The average transaction is $10, he said.

The couriers do not sell products that are not already offered by the Colorado Lottery.

After the bill was filed Friday, courier companies began scrambling to figure out how it might impact their business models. Bridges said he did not intend to put them out of business and believes they are protected. But others weren’t so clear on the bill’s language.

Metzger said his business would not suffer if the Colorado Lottery eventually offers online ticket sales. He cited New Hampshire, West Virginia and Washington, D.C., as places where couriers and state-sanctioned online lottery sales co-exist.

“We live in an age of convenience and, quite frankly, if you don’t want your players to age out and you to continue returning those funds to good causes, you have to reach players where they are,” Metzger said. “People just don’t have the same behavioral patterns that they used to. So we need to modernize the lottery like everything else is modern.”

The association, which represents casinos, including Monarch Casino in Black Hawk, conducted the poll after learning that gambling companies were interested in legalizing internet gambling — known as iGaming — in Colorado, a state in which online sports betting is popular.

While iGaming is legal in seven states, no bills are pending before the Colorado General Assembly that would legalize it.

Oliver Barie, the association’s government relations director, said Colorado registered the largest opposition for iGaming in any poll the group has conducted.

However, the pollsters said 23% of respondents were unfamiliar with the concept when first asked about their opinion. Another 58% were opposed when first asked about it. Once respondents received definitions and information about iGaming, the level of opposition rose to 78%, according to the poll’s results.

“Colorado is a poster child for opposition,” Barie said. “These voters get it. They understand it.”

Do you have a gambling problem?

The Problem Gambling Coalition of Colorado helps people who are addicted to gambling. Call 303-955-4682 or visit for help.

The Denver Post reports on the impacts of gambling in Colorado and wants to hear your stories about betting on sports. Please contact reporter Noelle Phillips at nphillips@denverpost.com if you are willing to talk about your experience.

The association’s poll was conducted by , a polling and analytics firm, and has a margin of error of 3.45%. The company polled 801 likely general election voters in January through text messages and live interviews. The polls sampled Democrats, Republicans and unaffiliated voters as well as people from various age groups and educational backgrounds.

Internet gambling is legal in seven states — New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Connecticut, West Virginia, Rhode Island and Nevada. Voters in Maine approved iGaming for a tribal group, but it has not been implemented.

In iGaming, participants can bet money on slots, blackjack, baccarat and other games traditionally played in casinos, and they can charge those bets to credit cards.

Casinos oppose iGaming because it could potentially lure customers away from traditional casinos. Studies have shown that legalized iGaming causes brick-and-mortar casinos to lose about 16% of their revenue, Barie said. That, in turn, trickles into the local economy, which is often dependent on casino visitors.

“Often those casinos are the lifeblood of the community,” he said. “If the casino is not doing well in the town, the town is not going to do well either because they rely on those casinos.”

The town of ��, and are members of the association, according to its website.

Among Colorado voters who were opposed to iGaming, 50% said they were concerned about addiction, while another 43% said they were concerned about debt and financial issues. Another 30% expressed concerns about youth access to online gambling, according to the poll results.

The poll also asked voters whether they opposed a planned expansion that would allow anyone 18 or older to purchase lottery tickets online and charge those purchases to a credit card.

A majority — 70% — said they did not approve of 18-year-olds buying lottery tickets online, and 76% said credit card charges for online lottery tickets should be prohibited, according to the poll.

The Colorado Lottery is working on an expansion that would allow people to buy tickets online directly from the state lottery and purchase those tickets with credit cards, something that is currently prohibited in the state. People can already buy Colorado Lottery tickets online through third-party vendors.

Tom Seaver, the Colorado Lottery director, said the state is aiming to introduce its online product next year after watching rollouts in other states. The Lottery’s market research shows that 38% of 12,000 people it polled said they would like to buy tickets with their credit cards.

“Research and polls can be very conflicting,” Seaver said.

The winning ticket — worth $3,328,106 — was sold at King Soopers, 12167 Sheridan Blvd., according to a news release from the Colorado Lottery.

The winner was the 471st player to win at least $1 million through the Colorado Lotto and Lotto+ system, and the first Colorado Lotto+ jackpot winner of 2026, lottery officials said in the release.

Monday’s winning numbers were 4, 18, 23, 30, 32 and 40, . The next drawing will be Wednesday night, with an estimated jackpot of $1 million up for grabs.

A “” jackpot-winning ticket was sold at the Corner Store in Lafayette, netting the winner $1,000 a day for life for a cash value of $5.75 million, state officials said in a news release.

Another $1.9 million ticket was sold at Winners Corner in Pueblo, which has a cash value of $950,000.

The Powerball jackpot is now at $1.25 billion, officials said.

The winning ticket was sold at an Alta Convenience Store at 731 East Main St. in Trinidad, according to a news release from the Colorado Lottery.

“We won’t know who the winner is until they claim,” lottery spokesperson Rhea Phaneuf said in the release.

Saturday night’s were: 5, 10, 13, 17, 30 and 35.

The lucky ticket holder, who remains anonymous and was the only person to hit the jackpot, won a total of $3,205,234 with a cash value of $1,602,617, according to lottery officials.

Only three other players won prizes above $1,000, according to the lottery.

Since the Colorado Lottery began in 1983, it has invested more than $4.5 billion into Colorado’s outdoors and schools, .