The nation’s highest court it would hear the case, in which Nebraska officials claim Colorado water administrators are violating a century-old water compact by failing to send enough of the river’s water across the border. They also say Colorado officials are interfering in the neighboring state’s efforts to build .

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser on Monday denied Nebraska officials’ allegations that the Centennial State was violating the 1923 South Platte River Compact.

“Colorado is complying with the South Platte River Compact and not interfering with Nebraska’s efforts to build the Perkins County Canal,” Weiser “Today’s court decision merely opens the door for Nebraska to bring its claims against Colorado. Nebraska’s burden to prove those claims is incredibly high and we will vigorously defend Colorado’s full entitlements under the compact.”

The South Platte River is a critical water source for Front Range cities and Eastern Plains agriculture. The river originates in the Front Range mountains before flowing through Denver and cutting across the northeast portion of the state and into Nebraska.

More than 85% of the state’s population lives in the river basin, and the river irrigates more than 850,000 acres of farmland — the highest concentration of irrigated acres of any river basin in Colorado. The South Platte provides, on average, half of the annual supply for Denver Water, which serves 1.5 million people across metro Denver, according to the utility.

The South Platte River Compact allows Nebraska to use more of the river’s water during the winter, but only if it builds a canal system. Nebraska leaders in 2022 revived long-dormant plans to build the Perkins County Canal, a move that could require them to use eminent domain to obtain land in Colorado.

Farmers in northeastern Colorado say that, if built, the canal would dry up tens of thousands of acres of farmland and threaten the economies of the corner of the state.

Nebraska officials last year surprised Colorado leaders by taking their allegations to the Supreme Court. The two states had been meeting for months to discuss the proposed canal project.

The Supreme Court asked to weigh in on whether it should take the case. In May, the federal office — tasked with representing federal interests at the Supreme Court — argued that the court should decide Nebraska’s claim that Colorado is not sending enough water over the state border, but deny consideration of Nebraska’s other issues.

Controversy over compact-obligated water deliveries between two states is a “quintessential” Supreme Court question, . The solicitor general’s office suggested appointing a special master — a subject-matter expert outside of the nine justices — to handle the issue.

The solicitor general’s brief argues that the Supreme Court should not hear Nebraska’s arguments that Colorado is obstructing its efforts to build the Perkins County Canal because, the office said, Nebraska has not identified any actions by Colorado officials that have substantially interfered in the project. Other potential canal-related problems identified by Nebraska are hypothetical, the solicitor general said, as the state has just begun the permitting process and, therefore, is not ready for Supreme Court consideration.

It’s unclear which issues the Supreme Court will consider as it hears the case. The order Monday allows Nebraska to file its complaint against Colorado.

, the Colorado Attorney General’s Office called Nebraska’s compact violation claims a “hunch.” Weiser previously said he doubted the Supreme Court would take the case.

Colorado’s attorneys now have 30 days to respond to Nebraska’s complaint. Litigation could span years, attorneys for both states have said.

Busold also spent the last two and a half of those years trying everything in her power to renew her lease on the land owned by Denver Water. But those efforts came up empty, and this will be the last season for the current version of an iconic destination for Vail tourists and locals alike.

Thanking everyone in the Vail community and visitors from around the globe who’ve canoed, fished, stayed overnight in her cabins, camped, enjoyed her barbecue, or shopped in her store, Busold said this is her final summer season, and her operations will wrap up on Sept. 26.

Busold and Piney River Ranch LLC inked a 15-year lease with Denver Water in 2012 but could not come to terms on an extension. The current lease expires on March 1, 2027, but there are no winter operations on the property, which is approximately 13 miles north of Vail, across U.S. Forest Service land, at the end of Red Sandstone Road. That����ap why this is Busold’s final season.

Read more from our partner at 

Colorado Parks and Wildlife announced emergency water conservation measures and boating restrictions at both Sylvan Lake State Park in Eagle County and Rifle Gap State Park in Garfield County, according to a Monday, June 22 news release.

Both parks are located within some of the more extreme drought conditions in Colorado. According to the June 18 U.S. Drought Monitor, Eagle County and western Garfield County are experiencing exceptional drought conditions — the worst measured by the monitor.

At Sylvan Lake State Park outside of Eagle, the park’s main source and well, Zurcher Spring, has run completely dry and shows no signs of recovery due to the extreme drought conditions in the region.

A little further west in Garfield County, Rifle Gap State Park is experiencing impacts brought on by the winter’s historically low snowpack and early snowmelt. To combat this, Parks and Wildlife is reducing motorized boat launching to a single lane and has pulled all courtesy docks from the water. Access for hand-launched vessels like kayaks, canoes and stand-up paddleboards will remain unaffected by the closure.

Read more from our partner at .

The bulk of the money — nearly $1.3 million — has been spent on Democratic primaries, with a smaller amount spent in Republican races. The Democratic spending has flowed from American Future, a vaguely named state-level political action committee that has reported just one donor — that, in turn, has been bankrolled exclusively by . That super PAC has received $43 million in donations from DraftKings, FanDuel and Fanatics.

Colorado’s gamble on sports betting

Without federal campaign finance reports, it would otherwise be unclear which interests were paying for the mailers and advertisements distributed under American Future's name.

The ads , and contains only vague allusions to Democratic-adjacent policy positions. The state PAC's description of itself provides no clarity, either, detailing its purpose as "supporting Colorado state legislative candidates who focus on pressing issues facing everyday people."

The industry's campaign spending comes barely a month after state lawmakers passed , a first-in-the-nation law that was sharply opposed by the sports-betting industry. The measure, signed into law by Gov. Jared Polis on June 1, limits the number of daily deposits a gambler can make and bans push notifications intended to solicit bets or deposits, among other new regulations.

The spending has not targeted the bill's sponsors, none of whom face primary opponents later this month, and has even supported some lawmakers who voted in favor of SB-131. The companies' PACs have donated to candidates across the political spectrum, including in some races with a clear favorite.

Other groups have been spending big in statehouse primaries this year, with much of it continuing a battle to tilt the Democratic majority in a more moderate or progressive direction.

The sports-betting-aligned state PAC reported nearly $215,000 in donations from its parent group as of June 15, along with $282,000 in spending. But in the weeks since then, it's posted hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional spending, bringing its total spending in Democratic primaries to nearly $1.3 million as of Monday afternoon, according to campaign finance records.

Final totals won't be clear until after June 30, which is primary election day.

On the GOP side, American Conservative Fund, which has also received money exclusively from Win for America, has donated $250,000 to a state-level PAC supporting Republican statehouse candidates. That PAC is funded by other outside business groups as well.

Like its Democratic counterpart, lists several Republican-sounding buzzwords among its priorities, with no additional information about its backers.

Messages sent to the three gambling companies were not returned Monday. Nathan Click, a spokesman for American Future, referred The Post to a previous statement, first sent to Axios in April. In that statement, the PAC said it was seeking candidates "who will thoughtfully approach regulation and ensure legal sports betting can continue to support communities through billions in tax revenue and jobs across America."

But the ubiquitous spread of sports betting has raised significant regulator interest amid growing fears about problem gambling, The Denver Post reported in a recent special series.

Since Colorado voters legalized the practice in 2020, residents have wagered more than $30.6 billion on games and athletes. More than $154 million has been collected in taxes, much of it for water-focused preservation and conservation projects. At the same time, more than 45,000 people in the state have called a hotline set up for gamblers who may need help, and 1,245 are now on the self-exclusion list that bans them from betting for at least five years.

Sen. Matt Ball, a Denver Democrat who sponsored SB-131 earlier this year, said he wasn't surprised the industry was getting directly involved in campaigns. He said the industry did not like SB-131 and had been active in several other states. that the federal PAC planned to spend money in as many as 15 states by November

Ball said he'd heard that lawmakers backing sports-betting regulations in other states had faced threats that the industry would back their primary opponents. But none of SB-131's sponsors has a primary challenger this year, and the Democratic primaries in which the companies' PACs are participating are in mostly safe blue seats located in the metro Denver.

"I'm not surprised that they're spending this directly," Ball said — but how they're spending has surprised him.

"Some of it is a little hard to read," he said. "I don't understand why they are spending in the races they are spending in, because they are spending in races across the political spectrum."

On the Democratic side, the money has been spent on roughly a dozen primary candidates, most of them running for soon-to-be-empty seats.

The PAC cannot coordinate with candidates' campaigns, and it's unclear why the gambling PAC chose the candidates that it did. While several Democratic hopefuls are moderates and have been backed by other outside business interests, at least two are progressives endorsed by the left-wing Working Families Party. Some are in contentious races, while others are comfortable favorites.

The two Working Families Party-endorsed candidates, Justine Sandoval and Gena Ozols, have both released statements on social media noting that the mailers came from an outside group that wasn't authorized by their campaigns.

Sandoval, who is running for a Denver-based House seat and has received more support from the sports-betting PAC than nearly any other candidate, said she was unfamiliar with the group's backers until recently.

Her campaign has raised $25,000 — more than $100,000 less than what American Future has spent to support her from the outside against primary opponent Sterling Thomas Simms. Sandoval said she was generally opposed to unrestricted outside spending.

She met with DraftKing's lobbyist in March or April, and the lobbyist was "curious" about her position on sports betting. She wasn't opposed to gambling, she said, but was concerned about it being unregulated. She didn't hear anything else from the group.

Then the mailers and advertisements started flowing.

Sandoval figured that the group was backing her because its leaders thought she'd win. She also noted that the district she hopes to represent, House District 5, will soon include all three of Denver's largest sports venues if the Broncos build a stadium in Burnham Yard.

"So, there's some kind of investment thought there," she said.

Ball speculated that the spending was a "goodwill" donation in support of candidates who are either likely to win in contested races or don't have a serious primary challenge at all. Three of the Democratic candidates that American Future is supporting are incumbents seeking a return to office. While they each have primary challengers, all are expected to comfortably win their contests later this month. And all three voted in favor of SB-131.

State Sen. Adrienne Benavidez, who has received more than $150,000 in outside support from American Future, said she wasn't familiar with the group or its funders until informed by a reporter Monday morning. She said she'd never had contact with the PAC or the companies supporting it.

She welcomed support from anyone, she said, and was pleased that the ads had been positive support for her, rather than negative against her opponent, Alex Ryckman.

"It was totally out of the blue," said Benavidez, who previously served in the House before earning a vacancy appointment to the Senate earlier this year. "I don't know anything about them. The contributions coming from those companies — I was not aware until you just told me that. I've never had any contact with them, I know nothing."

Updated at 9:56 a.m. June 21, 2026: This article was updated to include additional campaign spending by American Future.

Projections show that if dry conditions persist, Lake Powell’s water level could dip below a threshold called “minimum power pool” as soon as February. That’s the level below which water can no longer flow through the reservoir’s hydropower turbines.

Without intervention, the projections say, the lake will remain below the critical elevation for the foreseeable future.

The threat of Powell hitting that threshold — 3,490 feet in elevation — has hovered above federal water managers for months as the reservoir has continued to drop to record-low levels. In April, that they would send up to 1 million acre-feet of water from the upstream Flaming Gorge Reservoir to Powell and reduce the amount of water released from Powell to keep the reservoir’s level at 3,500 feet above sea level — which includes a small buffer Reclamation officials want to maintain to stay above the power pool level.

Powell’s water levels continue to drop as Colorado River leaders deal with two crises: one climatological and one political. Long-term drought fueled by climate change has shrunk the Colorado River’s flows as federal officials and water leaders in the seven basin states — including Colorado, home to its headwaters — struggle to agree on longer-term plans for the river’s management.

So far, they’ve failed to find agreement on how to divvy up the usage cuts necessary to adapt to lower flows that reduce the water supply for farmers and residents in a region that’s home to 40 million people.

When Lake Powell’s levels fall below minimum power pool, that means water can no longer flow through the intake tubes for ‘s hydropower facility, which is the primary method for moving water downstream from the reservoir in southern Utah.

Instead, water can move only through much smaller bypass tubes that, for years, have been considered unsafe for long-term use — though Reclamation officials now say they can be operated safely with continuous maintenance.

The bureau’s most recent projections, released Tuesday, show that the emergency measures taken this spring will only be a stopgap, unless extremely wet weather returns.

“We’re going to get to 3,500 of elevation (at Powell) this year, and we’re going to stay there for a while, unless we get snowmaggedon,” said , a senior fellow at the University of Colorado Law School. She previously served as the chair of the Upper Colorado River Commission and as assistant secretary for water and science at the U.S. Department of the Interior.

The updated projections come on the heels of . It shows that a relatively dry year would crash the river’s water storage system. The two major reservoirs would then fall so low under such a scenario that they essentially would no longer be usable as water savings accounts.

Instead, water managers would be able to pass water downstream only as it flowed into the reservoirs.

“This would be an outcome with devastating consequences,” the five authors stated in the paper.

‘This cannot be allowed to happen’

Bureau of Reclamation officials have said they will operate Lake Mead and Lake Powell to keep their water levels from falling below critical elevations. The federal water managers aim to keep Powell at 3,500 feet or higher and Mead at 975 feet — water levels that allow water to continue flowing through the reservoirs’ hydropower facilities and farther downstream.

Protecting those reservoir levels means that all the water below those elevations is rendered essentially inaccessible, the study authors wrote.

“If you get to those levels and Reclamation won’t allow the reservoirs to go below those levels, it����ap like those reservoirs aren’t there,” Castle said.

Those levels are coming soon, according to the analysis.

Once underwater, Colorado River canyon country reemerges as drought-stricken Lake Powell’s levels drop

The study's authors looked at two potential hydrologies: a year that is moderately wet, with water use remaining relatively unchanged; and one that is moderately dry — though not as dry as this past year — and water use falls.

A moderately wet year would buy only a few years of buffer unless the seven Colorado River basin states substantially reduce their water use, according to the analysis.

Under moderately dry conditions, Powell's level would fall to 3,500 feet above sea level, and Mead's would likely fall to 975 feet shortly after.

Those low reservoir levels would leave water managers with no flexibility to move water to meet the needs of water users in the Lower Basin states: Arizona, California and Nevada.

A reduction in the amount of water flowing from Powell into Mead could cause legal uncertainty across the basin, since the 1922 Colorado River compact requires the Upper Basin states — Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming and Utah — to pass a certain amount of water downstream from Powell.

Falling reservoir levels at Lake Mead also pose a threat to hydropower capacity at Hoover Dam, which across the Southwest. According to the Bureau of Reclamation's projections, water levels in the Nevada reservoir are projected to fall so low by November that power generation would be cut by 70%. That's because 12 of the dam's 17 turbines are not designed to operate at water levels below 1,035 feet.

The bureau projects that water levels in Mead will recover for a few months before plunging downward again in March — and staying below the level needed to avoid severe cuts in power production until at least April 2028, when Reclamation's projections end.

The only way to halt the slump toward a system crash is to bring water use in line with supply, Castle said. Immediate, basinwide water cuts that are unprecedented in size are the only way to prepare for the potential of a relatively dry winter, the authors wrote in the analysis.

"The political incentives to fight for the most favorable outcomes for individual states and water users must be overcome by the necessity of preventing a Colorado River system crash, the consequences of which would be devastating for those same water users," the analysis concludes. "This cannot be allowed to happen."

Backup systems safe, officials say

There is a sliver of good news among the catastrophic forecasts.

If Lake Powell falls below minimum power pool, the only way to release water downstream is through four 8-foot-diameter tubes called the river outlet works. For years, Bureau of Reclamation officials have said the tubes were not designed for long-term use at low water levels, and such use could cause structural damage to the dam.

But officials now say there's a way to safely use the river outlet works, if needed.

Recent studies of the river outlet works have shown that managers can operate the backup tubes continuously in a safe way, said Katrina Grantz, the deputy regional director for Reclamation’s Upper Colorado Region, at a conference in Boulder earlier this month. But the outlets require frequent inspections and maintenance when used continuously, which means that one of the four conduits will routinely be offline.

Over the course of a year, the maintenance rotation will result in an effective capacity of about three and a half outlets operating continuously, bureau spokesman Peter Soeth wrote in an email in response to follow-up questions from The Denver Post.

"The river outlet works were never designed to serve as the primary or long‑term release pathway," Soeth said. "Relying on them continuously would reduce operational flexibility and, over extended periods, could introduce wear that requires more intensive maintenance."

The bureau is studying ways to modify Glen Canyon Dam to deliver water and hydropower once the reservoir's water level drops below minimum power pool, Soeth said.

But any changes would not help in the immediate future — the first round of design appraisals and cost estimates won't be finished until 2027.

It’s not clear how many Coloradans are struggling to control their online sports gambling, but those who work in the mental health field say it’s a growing problem in the state. Since May 2020, more than 45,000 people have called 1-800-GAMBLER, a hotline for those who need help, and 1,245 people are currently on the state’s self-exclusion list, which means they have banned themselves from betting for at least five years.

The Denver Post is publishing this three-part series examining the impact of sports betting in Colorado in the six years since it was legalized.

Teams and leagues that once kept sports betting at arm’s length have embraced sportsbooks as business partners. That relationship is evolving as scandals have erupted, most recently involving Texas Tech’s quarterback, and as athletes report increasing harassment from angry gamblers who lose money.

Still, thousands of Coloradans regularly bet without going overboard, saying putting a little money on games makes them more exciting to watch. And bettors have generated more than $154 million in taxes, money that has gone toward funding water conservation projects across Colorado, helping preserve the state’s reservoirs, rivers and creeks for people and wildlife.

Here’s what we learned:

Part 1: Sports betting threatens to be Colorado’s ‘next big public health crisis’ if addiction isn’t addressed

Colorado plunged headfirst into legalized sports betting in 2020, and residents have bet more than $30.6 billion since then on games and the athletes who play them. But mental health experts are sounding the alarm about a growing addiction crisis that the state was not prepared to handle. Read more ►

Part 2: How sports betting became Colorado’s ticket to funding $140 million in water conservation projects

Since sports betting became legal, Colorado has collected more than $154 million in taxes and funneled $140 million to projects that preserve and conserve the state’s water. Supporters say the gambling money is a godsend for ranchers, fishermen, paddlers and more. Read more ►

Part 3: Sports betting is changing the game for Colorado’s fans and athletes as big money adds new pressures

Legalized sports betting is changing the face of sports and fandom in Colorado as people wager billions annually. Athletes are feeling the pressure to perform or provide inside information, and gambling is threatening the integrity of sports itself. Read more ►

Interactive dashboard: What sport does Colorado bet on the most?

Colorado sports betting has taken in more than $30.6 billion since 2020. Explore the data in an interactive dashboard that looks at what sports make the most money. Read more ►

Plus: Does the Denver Post’s reporter who covers sports betting bet on sports?

Reporter Noelle Phillips answers the question she asked everyone she interviewed about Colorado sports gambling: Do you bet on sports? Read more ►

The rusted structure was barely hanging on, and its operation was time-consuming for the busy ranchers, who had to lug special tools on all-terrain vehicles and on foot to open or close the mechanism. But it seemed impossible for the tiny district to find the $6.8 million needed to replace the headgate and the rocky diversion dam that pushed water into the canal.

Then legalized sports betting came along, and, with it, millions of dollars for Colorado water projects. The tiny irrigation district, in Moffat County in the far northwest corner of the state, soon became the poster child for how gambling money is benefiting Colorado’s waterways.

The district received a $750,000 grant from the , which doles out money from sports betting tax revenue, said, sustainable food and water program director for , which helped the district land the grant. That led to a matching grant from the program. With those two grants in hand, other organizations jumped on board, and money poured in, she said.

In 2024, the Maybell Irrigation District installed a new headgate that can be opened or closed via cellphone. If a rancher is cutting hay and doesn’t need to irrigate, he can close the gates to match the amount of water he actually needs at that moment, Lane said. And the diversion structure no longer uses boulders to control the water flow. Instead, it’s a modern structure that is the right height for water control.

The project also benefited four fish species, including the threatened humpback chub, and it made river navigation easier for boaters, helping the region’s outdoor recreation economy.

“That $750,000 was really the ball that got it all rolling, that showed people, ‘Oh, this is going somewhere,'” Lane said of that initial state grant.

Since sports betting became legal in May 2020, the state has collected more than $154 million in taxes, and the Colorado Water Conservation Board has funneled $140 million to various projects that preserve and conserve Colorado’s precious water. Supporters say the gambling money is a godsend for ranchers, fishermen, paddlers and others who want to protect the state’s water and those who depend on it for their livelihoods. Critics, however, say legalized sports betting has come at a cost — fueling an addiction crisis that the state was unprepared for and is underfunding.

This is the second story in The Denver Post’s three-part series exploring the impact of legalized sports betting in Colorado, including the billions spent on wagers, rising addiction rates, and the impact on athletes and the games they play.

Erin Karney Spaur, executive vice president of the , said she reminds her family members and friends who bet on sports that every time they place a wager, they are helping ranchers like those in Maybell access precious water.

“It����ap exponentially more than we could ever imagine,” she said of sports betting’s impact on ranches and water. “Coloradans like to gamble on sports, and water is the beneficiary.”

‘That’s our ticket’

In 2015, the Colorado Water Conservation Board — at the behest of then-Gov. John Hickenlooper — released a report on how to best conserve and protect the state’s water.

“It made a lot of plans. It set a bit of policy, and it identified two big funding needs,” said , director of western water for the .

The board determined at the time that Colorado needed $100 million per year for projects to improve river and stream health and restoration, to replace the agricultural industry’s aging irrigation systems and to conserve as much water as possible.

“The 2015 water plan put up that price tag and then continued on its merry way,” he said.

But the money wasn’t there.

A consortium of groups with interests in the state’s waterways — including environmental, agricultural and recreational organizations — began meeting to figure out how to fund the water plan. They considered various tax schemes, such as asking the state to put a levy on bottled water or rental cars. But none of their ideas came with an easy path to voter approval — something necessary to raise statewide taxes in Colorado.

“We sat around a table for over a year and a half trying to figure out how to do this, and there were no good options,” Jackson said.

Then, in 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court delivered a ruling that offered the answer to funding water projects in Colorado: . That decision overturned the , paving the way for states to legalize sports betting.

“I said, ‘That’s it. That’s our ticket,’ ” Jackson said.

Jackson thought Colorado voters would be sympathetic to the state’s water crisis, caused by decades of drought and climate change. They also wagered that a tax on sports betting would be easier for voters to digest because it would only be paid by those who chose to gamble; if someone didn’t want to pay the tax, then they didn’t have to participate, he said.

The legislature agreed to put it on the 2019 ballot, and voters approved with 51% in favor. The bill established a 10% tax on sports betting companies’ revenue.

“Water certainly pushed it over,” Jackson said.

Sports betting was slated to open in Colorado on May 1, 2020. But the big date was a false start. The COVID-19 pandemic hobbled betting like a quarterback with a bum knee.

“Sports betting was legal, and there were no sports,” Jackson said. “And I thought to myself, ‘What the hell did we just do?’ ”

Gross sports betting revenue in Colorado was $2.6 million, with 25% of wagers placed on table tennis. Tax revenue was just $96,544.

But that freeze on sports did not last, and the gambling money began flowing as rapidly as Clear Creek during the early summer snowmelt.

The revenue stream

Colorado leaders soon realized sports betting was far more lucrative for tax revenues than had been predicted. In the first six years of legalized sports betting, the has reported record-setting figures each year.

“It����ap been hugely successful,” said Drew Peternell, Colorado state director at . “Revenues from sports betting have greatly exceeded any expectations when these mechanisms were put in place.”

By May 2021, when sports betting in Colorado hit its first anniversary, monthly tax revenue hit $635,640 — more than five times what sports wagering had brought in during the same month just a year prior, according to data from the Department of Revenue.

In its most recent report on sports-betting taxes, the department reported it collected $4.4 million in April. The news releases often tout the success of sports betting and the benefits it brings to state waterways. They also include links to , the state’s website for problem gambling resources.

The April tax revenue was 28% more than the amount collected in April 2025, and taxes collected for the current fiscal year through April were at $40.7 million, up 35% over the same period last year.

Thus far, the largest single-month record for tax revenue came in January when the state collected $5 million from $57.8 million in revenue. Coloradans bet $630.2 million, with $119 million wagered on professional football in a month when the Broncos made a run to the conference championship game.

Proposition DD’s 10% tax on net proceeds from sports betting means casinos and companies doing business in Colorado pay the tax after they pay out winning bets and federal taxes.

But the Colorado General Assembly placed a $29 million-a-year cap on sports betting tax revenue when it approved Proposition DD for the statewide ballot. If the state collected more than $29 million each year, the overage was to be refunded to the casinos and licensed gaming companies.

Proposition DD also determined how sports betting proceeds were to be divvied up between programs, with water projects receiving 93% of the tax revenue.

The first projection estimated that sports betting would generate about $16 million annually and that water projects would receive $14.9 million.

Six percent of the tax revenue, or an estimated $960,000, would be set aside in a special fund that would be distributed to Colorado’s three casino cities and other entities that received gaming revenue if they could prove that the new sports betting market caused them to lose money due to decreased bets on traditional gambling and horse racing.

So far, no one has tapped that fund.

Problem gambling would receive just $130,000 annually for establishing a crisis hotline and training for gambling addiction counselors. That amount was increased to $2.5 million annually in 2023.

The Post interviewed seven people whose agencies receive sports betting tax revenue, but only one — Jackson — said they bet on sports themselves. And only one person, who did not want their family’s story to be told publicly, said they sometimes were bothered by the addiction problem because a loved one had died by suicide after gambling away his money.

The tax revenue proved so lucrative that water proponents returned to the legislature to ask for another statewide ballot. This time, which voters approved in 2024, eliminated the $29 million cap, meaning casinos and licensed sports betting companies can no longer receive refunds. And more money will pour into the water conservation fund.

In 2025, water proponents returned to the revenue well again.

This time, they asked the General Assembly to eliminate a clause that had allowed sports betting companies to use their free bet promotions as tax write-offs.

In those promotions, DraftKings, FanDuel and others lure prospective gamblers by offering “free bonus bets” when users apply a promo code advertised on television.

During the NFL’s wild card playoff weekend between Jan. 10 and 12, for example, FanDuel offered a promotion in which bettors would receive $300 when they placed a $5 bet on a game. In the past, FanDuel would have been allowed to write that $300 off as a tax deduction.

But starting in January, that tax deduction was no longer allowed, which means FanDuel and other companies doing business in Colorado pay even more in taxes.

For years, the sports betting companies had argued that losing the tax deduction would force them to pull back on those offers and lead to fewer players, Jackson said. But Colorado watched other states that did not offer similar tax deductions and realized those promotions were still available to gamblers.

“It’s still the primary marketing scheme,” Jackson said. “Colorado was very much an outlier in allowing the deduction.”

Colorado’s water woes

As the planet’s temperature rises, Colorado’s rivers and streams become more threatened by drought.

Last year was for Colorado after the state marked its 10th-warmest year out of 130 years of data, according to the at .  It was the 51st driest year on record, and a swath of northwestern Colorado fell into exceptional drought — the most dire category recorded by the .

And 2026 has brought even hotter and drier weather, with the winter being the warmest on record and snowpack at its lowest levels since records started being kept in 1941.

While drought dries up lakes, rivers and streams, it also impacts almost every person living in Colorado. People live with a shortage of drinking water supplies, irrigation becomes trickier for ranchers, rivers dry up for rafters and fishermen, fish and wildlife struggle, and manufacturers must cope with less water.

Less water also boosts the state’s risk for devastating wildfires and can cause insect infestations or forest diseases to spread.

“Climate change is water change in Colorado, and we need every resource we can to put towards building a more resilient future,” said Lauren Ris, the Colorado Water Conservation Board’s director.

The conservation board intends to help Coloradans address all of those issues with the  through the state’s water plan.

“It primarily focuses on water supply, not water quality,” Ris said.

Projects awarded money during the most recent grant cycle in September included:

• to build a new water storage facility at the Jurgens Reservoir in Weld County that will increase the Lower Latham Reservoir Company’s irrigation supply
• to Adams 12 Five Star Schools to evaluate 54 irrigation systems across 475 acres of irrigated landscape and develop a water conservation plan for the district
• for a Colorado River conservation exhibit at the Confluence Center of Colorado in Mesa County

The water board employs a team of regional grant managers who live and work in the areas they serve. They become familiar with their region’s needs and help decide which projects are worth funding, said Jeannine Shaw, the grants section chief at the water board.

The more organizations applying for a grant together, the more competitive the application becomes, she said. And all of the grants awarded require the applicants to find matching funds, doubling the amount of money available.

And, as more money is spent on sports betting, Colorado can expand its outreach to all four corners of this parched state.

“The difference that makes on the ground is pretty incredible,” Ris said.

In the San Luis Valley, ranchers have long spread water over their grasslands when temperatures start to freeze to create a sheet of ice over the vegetation. As the ice slowly melts during the spring thaw, it seeps into the ground, recharging the water table. It also helps revegetate retired farmland and creates a habitat for wintering birds and wildlife, said Fay Hartman, conservation director for the southwest region of .

In September 2025, American Rivers received a $199,761 grant funded by sports betting to study how the winter ice sheet practice actually benefits the environment. The grant will provide the money for a groundwater study so scientists can collect data by placing groundwater wells at the near Saguache. American Rivers secured $145,956 in matching funds.

There just wasn’t good data on the benefits of creating the winter sheet ice, Shaw said. Different groups wanted to quantify what happens so they would be better informed about the practice and find ways to improve it.

The project, named Frozen Assets, demonstrates the water conservation board’s desire to support innovative ideas for Colorado’s water management, Ris said.

“We’re really able to test some of these theories and use this funding where there is not a whole lot of other opportunity out there to really test some concepts and pilot some things that could have pretty big benefits,” Ris said.

So far, Ris and others who are working to solve Colorado’s water woes believe sports betting revenue is the lifebuoy the state needs to start solving the crisis. It’s not enough, they said, but it’s charting the right course as the state responds to increasing drought, floods and wildfires worsened by climate change.

“We’re thrilled,” she said. “What we really needed was a steady funding stream for water projects, and that����ap what this proved to be.”

READ PART 3 NEXT: Sports betting is changing the game for Colorado’s fans and athletes as big money adds new pressures

Set to launch down a ski slope at Breckenridge, where he was celebrating his engagement with his fiancée and their friends, Everett glanced at his phone before pushing off.

A notification informed Everett that he had just won $55,000 on a $15 fantasy-golf wager on the . The money was in his PayPal account by the time he finished the run.

“That was more than my salary at the time,” he said. “You convince yourself that you’re so good.”

The money was gone almost as fast as Everett, high on dopamine from his big score, flew down that mountain. By the end of the ski weekend, he had blown the entire $55,000: drinks and food for his friends, a gold watch and, worst of all, more bets, including an $18,000 loss with one tap on his phone to bet — incorrectly — on the Big 10 football championship. He did not have enough money to buy gas to get home.

For Everett, the next two-and-a-half years would be “incredibly off the rails.”

“After I lost that money, I couldn’t get it out of my head chasing that,” he said. “I was basically trying to win it all back.”

Colorado, much like Everett, plunged headfirst into legalized sports betting after voters approved it in 2019. Since online sportsbooks opened in May 2020, the state’s residents have bet more than $30.6 billion on the outcomes of games and on the performances of the athletes who played them, netting the state more than $154 million in tax revenue.

But the growing popularity comes at a cost.

Mental health and addiction experts are sounding the alarm about a growing crisis that Colorado was not prepared to handle. The state does not sufficiently fund services for people who become addicted to gambling via the sports-betting apps on their phones, mental health experts say, and there are not enough therapists trained to treat gambling addiction. Colorado also provided little funding to promote awareness about gambling addiction and put limited guardrails in place to help people slow their betting habits.

It’s not clear how many Coloradans have gambling problems. There’s never been a study to determine that, but the results of a national survey suggest that more than 100,000 people in the state could suffer from that mental health disorder.

Jamie Glick, executive director of the , calls gambling addiction the “next big public health crisis.”

“Unfortunately, we are hearing a lot of rock-bottom stories,” Glick said. “People aren’t seeking help until they hit rock bottom. We are seeing people whose marriages are destroyed. They’re financially destroyed.”

Six years after legalization, Colorado is trying to catch up. The General Assembly this spring passed a bill that will put some controls on sports-betting apps, including by limiting the number of daily deposits a person can make. The state also increased the share of tax revenue funneled annually to problem-gambling awareness and prevention.

Gambling companies told The Denver Post they are creating new features to help people limit how much they spend, saying it is in their best interest to retain customers who view betting as entertainment, not a problem. Five sportsbooks stopped accepting credit cards in the past year amid growing criticism that people should not gamble with money they don’t have, and Colorado will ban credit card deposits, beginning in August.

“We want our customers to play with us month over month or year over year,” said Cory Fox, senior vice president of public policy and sustainability at . “If they have a problem, they will be off the platform.”

The Post examined the impact of legalized sports betting in the state by interviewing those involved in the industry and those who regulate it, mental health professionals, the groups who benefit from the tax dollars, athletes and coaches, and the gamblers. The Post also analyzed the money spent to show how much people are wagering, which sports are most popular for betting, and how much revenue sportsbooks are earning.

The first installment of this three-part series looks in-depth at gambling addiction and the attempts to get it under control before it becomes a public health crisis. The second part will examine how water conservation advocates bet on sports gambling to obtain funding to rescue communities and industries dependent on the state’s scarce water resources.

And the final story will explore how betting is changing sports itself as professional leagues embrace sportsbooks as business partners, even as gambling scandals make headlines and athletes report increasing hostility from fans who lose money when players fail to perform.

The launch of sports betting

Colorado was among the early adopters of legalized sports betting when voters approved Proposition DD in November 2019.

The state had moved quickly after the the 1992 , a federal law that had prohibited states from allowing sports betting.

In exchange for legalizing sports betting, Colorado voters agreed that sportsbooks should be taxed at a 10% rate to fund water conservation. That bargain pushed Proposition DD toward a narrow win, and the rushed to put rules in place.

By May 2020, sportsbooks in Colorado were open for business, and amid the COVID-19 pandemic, people found a new avenue for entertainment. Although the pandemic paused major sports in the U.S., including the Kentucky Derby, the NCAA basketball tournament and the NBA season, Coloradans still found sports to wager on.

Bettors spent more than $25.6 million that first month, with the largest percentage of bets being placed on table tennis at $6.6 million.

Table tennis remains one of the most popular sports for Colorado gamblers to bet on, with $989 million wagered since legalization. In April, it was the fourth most popular sport for wagering, with $28.5 million bet on it.

Those who want tighter controls on sports betting cite table tennis wagers in their arguments, saying it’s an example of problem gambling because Americans do not care about or understand ping-pong and only bet on it because it’s played in other parts of the world when most people in this country are asleep.

Professional basketball is the state’s favorite sport when it comes to betting, with $7.3 billion wagered on the NBA and overseas leagues, as of April. The NFL is second, followed by baseball, tennis and NCAA basketball, according to the revenue department’s data.

Sports betting continues to grow year after year.

In April, the most recent month of data available, Coloradans bet $521 million on sports — 20 times more than that first month in 2020. The state raked in $4.4 million in taxes.

, director of the state Division of Gaming, said interest in local sports teams is driving the growth, especially with the Broncos, Nuggets and Avalanche fielding championship-caliber teams.

“It’s becoming more and more exciting to watch our teams here in Colorado,” he said. “Every time we have a lot of interest in sporting events featuring our local teams, we see that continued growth. It’s more accessible with attention and advertising.”

Colorado has a healthy sports-betting market with 13 online companies and 10 in-person sportsbooks, Schroeder said. The goal, he said, is to have the best odds available for the gamblers.

The state also offers a with 5,866 approved events and wagers, ranging from which team will win the Super Bowl to whether someone will get knocked out in the U.S. SlapFIGHT championship to who will win the Chinese Basketball Association’s Club Cup.

At the same time, Schroeder said the state is committed to responsible gaming, which is the term the industry uses instead of gambling.

“We want individuals to bet smart,” he said. “Betting should be entertainment. It shouldn’t be something where you’re adding on a second level to the house by gambling.”

Colorado offers a through which gamblers can ban themselves from online apps and in-person sportsbooks at the state’s casinos. There were 1,245 people on that list as of June 15.

The state also promotes March as and operates the . Each year, the state awards millions in grants to nonprofits that are focused on gambling addiction.

Yet even as sports betting grows, public opinion is becoming more critical.

An found 43% of Americans say sports betting is bad for society, up from 34% in a 2022 poll. Still, 22% of respondents said they had bet on sports in the past year, up from 19% in the prior study.

Chasing the high

It’s impossible to know how many people in Colorado bet on sports, let alone to understand how many might suffer from a gambling addiction. Sports betting companies do not release their data and the state does not conduct public health monitoring of gambling addiction.

Sports betting is prolific among young people, said Evette Marquez, a 26-year-old, diehard Broncos fan.

She learned to gamble on a sports app from an ex-boyfriend and routinely places wagers on her favorite sport — pro football. Most of her friends do, too.

“Everyone is betting these days, especially at my age,” she said. “Some people may not be paying rent.

“I think people my age get stuck on the dopamine. You get that green ticket,” she said, referring to an icon on the DraftKings app that signifies a winning bet, “and it����ap the best feeling.”

That dopamine hit certainly contributes to the addictiveness of gambling, said assistant professor of psychiatry at the .

“It’s something pleasurable like hearing your favorite song or eating chocolate,” she said.

People who become addicted to gambling can naturally have lower dopamine levels, making them crave a high, Hemendinger said. And some people are just hardwired to take risks, and that makes them more prone to gambling addiction, she said.

Researchers have also linked gambling disorders to the parts of the brain that respond to rewards and regulate social behaviors and impulse control, Hemendinger said. But the prefrontal cortex is not fully developed until a person reaches their mid-to-late 20s, making young people more susceptible to impulsive behavior while gambling.

The profile of a heavy sports bettor is a male younger than 35 who is single, employed and well-educated, according to the . And they think sports betting involves skill, not luck, which makes them “prone to distortions in thinking,” according to a coalition summary of sports wagering and addiction studies.

Matt Ferraccio, 38, started gambling in middle school, continuing into adulthood. He found it an escape from other problems in his life.

Ferraccio said he used legal gambling apps as well as the unregulated, overseas sportsbooks and bookies. He took advantage of special promotions, and when he ran out of credit on one, he opened another account.

“A compulsive gambler just doesn’t stop,” he said.

Ferraccio and Everett each talked about “chasing” their losses. Both men said they were never satisfied with a big win. They placed more bets rather than pocketing their winnings, and when they lost, they tried to win the money back — usually losing even more.

“It’s really hard to replicate that feeling you get when you win a lot of money,” Ferraccio said. “It means higher bets and longer sessions. You’re just chasing.”

Gambling addicts can stay awake for days, betting on obscure sports happening in other countries.

“You can log in at 3 a.m. and find tennis that����ap going on in China, ping-pong in Russia, basketball in China, cricket games. The possibilities are endless if you want to be compulsive and keep going, which I did,” Ferraccio said.  “Obviously, you don’t know anything about them, but you just pick.”

Ferraccio always promised himself he would stop once he dug himself out of a financial hole. It never happened.

Unprepared for a crisis

The National Council on Problem Gambling estimates that 9 million Americans have a gambling disorder, which is recognized as a mental health illness in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

Brianne Doura-Schawhol, director of the , said a 2023 study by the estimated about 2.4% of the population struggles with gambling addiction, which would mean about 110,000 adults in Colorado suffer from it.

But Colorado never conducted a study to gauge the prevalence of problem gambling before it legalized sports betting, and public health officials have no plans to do one.

“How can you make policy decisions without the proper data?” Doura-Schawhol said.

Colorado also ranks among the worst in the nation when it comes to funding gambling addiction resources, multiple people told The Post. The state law that legalized sports betting established a 10% tax on net sports betting proceeds, but only allocated $130,000 annually to problem gambling.

In 2023, the legislature boosted the annual amount to $2.5 million. Since 2023, the Colorado Division of Gaming has awarded $11.2 million in grants to organizations that raise awareness about addiction and help those who suffer from it.

The state allocated less than a penny per person for gambling services in 2023, by the National Association of Administrators for Disordered Gambling Services.

The bill passed in May did not include additional money for prevention and treatment. And as lawmakers faced down a $1.5 billion budget deficit, there was little room to set aside extra money. The legislature could shift some funds set aside for water to gambling addiction issues, but that has not been proposed.

Nationally, there is no federal revenue stream to support gambling addiction prevention and treatment, even though experts estimate that the social cost of gambling addictions exceeds $14 billion annually in the U.S.

In March, a group of bipartisan representatives in Congress introduced the Providing Opportunities for Individuals In Need of Treatment and Support, also known as the , which would divert a third of federal taxes collected on gambling to awareness, prevention and treatment of gambling addiction. If approved, it would raise an estimated $100 million per year, according to the National Council on Problem Gambling.

But in Colorado, there is no movement to increase funding for gambling addiction, even as the state rakes in tax revenue from sports betting.

Doura-Schawhol said the National Campaign for Fairer Gambling ranks Colorado at the bottom of the 39 U.S. states that have legalized sports gambling when it comes to funding treatment and prevention for gambling addiction.

Liesl Leary-Perez, co-founder of , said Colorado has long ignored mental health problems, and sports betting addiction is now one more thing on the list that needs to be addressed.

“To answer your question of ‘Were we prepared?’ No! We were not prepared,” Leary-Perez said of Colorado’s swift entry into the online sports-betting world. “And no one seems to care because we aren’t increasing that budget.”

When legalized sports betting came online, those who work in the addiction-treatment field were not prepared for clients struggling with gambling addiction.

The , which establishes the best practices for counseling gambling addicts and issues certifications to professional therapists, lists just 17 people in Colorado who have received certification. Only two are practicing in Denver, the state’s largest city.

The Problem Gambling Coalition of Colorado lists 18 counselors who treat gambling addiction and two behavioral health centers that offer telehealth appointments for gambling addiction on its website. And the coalition has developed a four-hour certification program for counselors on college campuses to help them recognize and treat the problem, Glick said.

Daniel Umfleet, founder and chief executive officer of , a behavioral health company focused on gambling addiction, left the United Kingdom to move to Colorado to start up his company after sports betting was legalized in the U.S.

Treatment for gambling addicts is in its infancy in the United States, Umfleet said.

“The unfortunate reality today is there are not enough health systems that understand this and have adopted it into their service mix,” he said. “The infrastructure wasn’t there.”

Ryan Canaday, founder of the in Denver, said he received a warning in 2020 from a doctor who called sports betting the “new dopamine dump,” and recommended his church and its associated nonprofit, which focuses on addiction recovery, prepare for it.

Then more people started showing up, seeking help, and Canaday had to learn what those addicts needed to recover.

“When I heard someone say, ‘Last night I lost $100,000,’ it was hard for me to fathom. I thought, ‘Well, why’d you place that big of a bet? And why couldn’t you just stop?’ and all the questions a rational mind asks,” Canday said, “but this disease of addiction is not rational, or else none of us would be here, right?”

‘Modern-day get-rich-quick scheme’

Arty Smith, a math teacher, last year launched the , a program that teaches teenagers the pitfalls of wagering.

Smith’s lessons on sports betting involve PowerPoint presentations with bar graphs and pie charts as he breaks down how it’s nearly impossible to beat the house.

He gathered data from every NFL game since 1966 and crunched numbers to show that picking the over/under bets — guessing what the total points scored by both teams in a game will be and whether it will be higher or lower than the points total set by the house — is no different than picking heads or tails on a coin toss.

It is a certainty that people lose money in the long run, Smith said.

“It doesn’t matter how well you know the game of football,” he said. “You could be Peyton Manning for all I care, you still won’t be able to pick football games any better than you could pick the outcome of the coin flip.”

On the over/under bet, the house has a 4.5% edge, Smith said. But when it comes to parlays, the house edge jumps to 40%. In a parlay, gamblers wager on multiple things happening at one time.

For the April 30 playoff game between the Denver Nuggets and the Minnesota Timberwolves, offered a “Joker Jackpot” parlay that would pay out if all-star center Nikola Jokic scored more than 30 points, recorded more than 10 assists, grabbed more than 10 rebounds, and hit more than three three-point shots. In gambler parlance, that’s a “four-leg parlay.” A winning bet on a $10 wager would return $70.

The parlays are wildly popular with gamblers because they have higher payouts, and they benefit sportsbooks because they have higher odds and bigger profits.

“It����ap a way for the sportsbooks to take gamblers’ money even faster,” Smith said. “It’s the modern-day get-rich-quick scheme. It doesn’t seem that hard to win the bet.”

Smith developed the Gambling Awareness Initiative after a friend consulted him about how to respond to his preteen son’s request to create an online sportsbook account because the boy was too young to open his own.

“He knew what he wanted to tell his boy about drinking and drugs and unprotected sex, but he was unprepared for the question about gambling,” Smith said. “It occurred to me that we need to talk about this.”

Zach Everett’s love of gambling started as a child at a race track when his father allowed him to pick a horse and placed a bet on his son’s behalf.

He gambled through a bookie for a couple of years in college. In 2018, Everett obtained his first credit card while earning $36,000 per year. Sports betting would not be legal for another two years, but daily fantasy sports were legal and growing in popularity in the U.S.

The daily fantasy sports apps run by DraftKings and FanDuel were not considered gambling because participants played against each other rather than the house. But those games gave both companies footholds in the market before sports betting became legalized, and they continue to reign as the biggest sports-betting companies in the country.

Everett, a self-described “big-time sports fan,” used his new credit card to make deposits into a DraftKings account to enter those fantasy sports contests. But he couldn’t handle winning a big prize.

“My brain couldn’t comprehend it was life-changing money,” he said. “You’re not holding the cash and you don’t have a moment to breathe. It����ap just so fast and then you blink and it����ap gone.”

Sportsbooks and responsible gaming

The sportsbook operators say they take measures to promote responsible gambling, arguing it would be short-sighted to drive people away through increasing addiction.

Lori Kalani, chief responsible gaming officer at DraftKings, said it is in her company’s best interest to establish controls that players can use to limit themselves.

“It����ap the right thing to do,” she said. “If people are out of control and they’re spending money on entertainment that they don’t have to spend, they’re not going to be a happy customer and we’re not going to be a happy business. We want long-term customers. Not only is it the right thing to do, it’s the smart thing to do.”

At DraftKings, Kalani has a staff of 50 who work on the company’s responsible gaming programs. Those include a budget builder that lets players determine how much they want to spend and how long they want to be on the app. They can set alerts that notify them when they’ve hit their limits.

DraftKings also provides customers with a personal stat sheet they can use to review how much they’ve deposited, how much they’ve wagered, how much time they’ve spent on the app, and even which sports they’ve bet on. It’s like getting a monthly spending report from a credit card company, she said.

Meanwhile, Kalani’s staff also manually reviews individual accounts flagged for abnormal betting patterns, such as a customer suddenly making much larger or more frequent deposits. Last year, 92,000 accounts were reviewed, she said.

When Kalani, who is a lawyer, first took the job at DraftKings, she was surprised by how few people used the various tools that help control time and money on the app. People saw responsible gaming tools as something only those who have problems need, she said.

“I thought that was upside down,” she said. “The whole point is you use them so nothing gets out of control. It����ap a lot of work to change how people think about that.”

Fox, Kalani’s counterpart at FanDuel, said his company also makes an effort to boost participation in the app’s responsible gaming features.

FanDuel’s parent company, , wants 75% of its average monthly players to use its responsible gaming tools by 2030. Individual performance bonuses for employees on his team will be tied to that goal, Fox said.

One tool introduced in the past year by FanDuel is an artificial intelligence program that can quickly detect when a person has deposited an amount that is much larger than that player’s previous deposits on the app. The program then asks the player if they are sure about the amount, Fox said.

A staff of 30 people reviews accounts that get flagged for abnormal betting patterns, and after users threaten customer service representatives or even mention they can’t pay their mortgage. Those employees can send emails with responsible gaming information, put players in time-out, set deposit limits and, in some cases, ban them from the app, Fox said.

“There’s still a lot of work to be done in this field. We are not declaring victory,” Fox said. “We are working hard to figure out the best ways to identify and protect that small percentage of our user base who may be struggling to manage their play on our site.”

While the sports betting companies say they limit problem gamblers, others insist that’s not the case.

Josiah Clarke, 40, is a lawyer and a sports betting sharp — meaning he figured out how to win consistently.

Clarke played fantasy football for years and casually bet on offshore sportsbooks. But when sports betting was legalized in Colorado, and the pandemic gave him a lot of spare time, he decided to “take a real go at it.”

Clarke, who lives in Greeley, built a system of analyzing games and created his own model for statistical analysis. He raised the stakes as his model improved.

He won — and the sportsbooks noticed his winning pattern.

DraftKings was the first to limit him after he won $24,000 over two football seasons, Clarke said. FanDuel followed.

“I’d try to bet like $2,000 on an NFL game, and they’d say you can bet up to $47,” he said. “And I was like, it����ap not worth all the effort I’m putting into it for $47.”

Ferraccio and Everett said no sportsbook ever cut them off, even when it was clear they were gambling too much.

“Responsible gambling from these sportsbooks doesn’t even come close to identifying people,” Ferraccio said. “If they see me spending all night doing it, guess who’s getting the free bet? Guess who’s getting the big promotions? It����ap not the people who are winning.”

Bonus bets are not free money. Instead, gamblers must put something into their accounts first. Gamblers are never allowed to withdraw those “bonuses,” and they expire.

FanDuel’s Fox took exception to accusations that sportsbooks do not actually limit gamblers who show signs of addiction.

“First and foremost, we absolutely identify problem gamblers and prevent them from being on our site any longer,” he said. “Any suggestions that we don’t actually do that on that basis are inaccurate and wrong.”

Doing a lot with a little

Colorado has boosted its addiction awareness and prevention efforts in the six years since sports betting went online.

The state’s Gaming Division funds responsible gaming grants, doling out $3.8 million in March. Those grants were awarded to nonprofits, including the Problem Gambling Coalition of Colorado, which will use its $1.5 million to certify therapists treating gambling addiction, to support a project that works with college students, and to promote gambling addiction awareness.

The , a nonprofit advised by Umfleet, received more than $1 million to work with the military to address gambling addiction within the ranks. He said Colorado is doing a lot of work with little funding, and some efforts are gaining national attention.

“You’re doing it half the speed of what you would prefer,” he said.

In its most recent legislative session, the General Assembly passed , setting some first-in-the-nation standards to control addiction through state law. The law will go into effect in August.

The new law bars gambling companies from sending push notifications to their app users, something that emerging research shows triggers people into betting more. It also restricts advertising from targeting people younger than 21.

The new law will limit gamblers to six daily deposits on an app. But it does not limit the amount a person can deposit, and people can have multiple apps, meaning they still could deposit an unlimited amount of money in a 24-hour period.

The bill was watered down after its sponsors, under pressure from the gambling companies and their lobbyists, struck a provision that would have banned all proposition bets. A prop bet allows gamblers to wager on an individual athlete’s performance, and those prop bets can be rolled into the wildly popular parlays. Colorado already bans prop bets on college athletes.

Sen. Matt Ball, a Denver Democrat who was one of the bill’s bipartisan sponsors, said the new law should put some friction between gamblers and their impulse to place bets.

It was needed, he said, because technology has rapidly changed since Colorado legalized sports gambling, making it easier and faster for people to bet. Industry advertising works, Ball said, because he sees its effect on his preteen son.

“It works on his brain,” Ball said. “He asks me about placing bets. He thinks he can make a big hit, win $100. We need to put reasonable guardrails on sports betting to protect our kids.”

‘There is hope’

Ferraccio has no idea how much money he lost over the years. He said he could go on a winning streak and have as much as $200,000 in his accounts, only to lose it all over again.

“It����ap a lot,” he said. “Everything I’ve ever earned basically.”

Ferraccio placed his last bet on July 1, 2024.

“I was hitting a point where I had nothing but debt and darkness, and it just made me sick,” he said. “When you get to that point, it doesn’t feel like you have a way out.”

Ferraccio was afraid that if he did not stop and get help, he would become part of the statistic that haunts gambling addiction — the high suicide rate.

Multiple studies in the U.S. and internationally have found that people with gambling disorders have higher suicide rates than people suffering from other addictions, such as alcohol. One in five people with a gambling addiction has attempted suicide, according to the National Problem Gambling Coalition.

Ferraccio found help in recovery groups. He formed friendships with other recovered gamblers, and they hold each other accountable.

“There is hope,” he said. “You have to look in the right places. You have to admit you lost control. If you can’t admit you have a serious problem, you’re never going to get right.”

For three years after his big fantasy golf prize, Everett said he gambled so much that he alienated almost all of his friends and family.

He maxed out six or seven credit cards. He burned through at least six payday loans. He ran out of friends and relatives willing to loan money. He pawned a $12,000 TAG Heuer watch that his dad had given him as a wedding present. He wrecked his car — also on loan from his dad — while checking a bet on his phone.

Everett, who worked as a sales director and ranked first in sales for his company, was fired after his boss learned he had asked a client for a loan.

“Getting called into the office that day…” Everett said, unable to finish explaining what happened.

He dreaded telling his wife he had lost his job because of his gambling. She quit wearing her wedding ring.

Everett gambled away his severance. Loan sharks came calling. His first inpatient stay had failed, and support groups and regular therapy were not helping. He considered fraud. He considered overdosing.

So he flew home to Minnesota and the one person who still took his calls — his dad, Brad Everett.

Looking back, Brad Everett said he did not realize that gambling addiction strangles people much like alcohol and drug addiction.

“I didn’t understand why he just couldn’t stop,” he said. “It was a complete lack of understanding. And a complete lack of understanding of how easy it is with your phone and the apps.”

Brad Everett had already flown to Denver multiple times to help his son, crafting lists of people from whom his son had borrowed money. “But it was never the end,” he said.

Brad Everett checked his son into another rehab center in Minneapolis with a warning: If Zach Everett did not complete rehab and stop gambling, he would be financially cut off.

“He’s the most generous man in the world, and it was eye-opening to me to see him get to his breaking point,” Zach Everett said.

Everett placed his last bet on April 24, 2024.

Since then, he said he has kept his promise to his father. He repaired his marriage. He is slowly paying off debts and earning his old friends’ trust. He attends regular meetings with other recovering gamblers.

And he is becoming more comfortable telling his story in hopes of helping others struggling with gambling addiction.

“It’s such a hidden problem,” Everett said. “You’re definitely not alone. I know how scary it is. If you do not address it, it����ap only going to get worse. You’re not going to win yourself out of whatever hole you’re in. You can’t bet yourself out of it.”

READ PART 2 NEXT: How sports betting became Colorado’s ticket to funding $140 million in water conservation projects

Updated 10 a.m. June 18, 2026: This story has been updated to clarify Daniel Umfleet’s relationship to the Kindbridge Research Institute.

Several campgrounds across the state will be unable to provide visitors with water because their wells are low or dry amid one of the worst droughts on record, according to a spokesperson for the USDA Forest Service. Those include the Lowry, Prospector, Windy Point and Marvine campgrounds in the White River National Forest; and the Iron City, Spillway and Jefferson Creek campgrounds in the Pike-San Isabel National Forest.

Additionally, the spring-fed water supply at Sylvan Lake State Park in Eagle is critically low and may run dry during the season. The website advises filling camper tanks ahead of arriving and notes limited potable water is available at the visitor center.

Conditions can change at any time, so it’s worth contacting the local ranger where you plan to travel to see about water availability. As a rule of thumb, bring your own.

Colorado is facing drought after the winter saw record-low snowpack and an uncharacteristically warm spring. On June 2, Gov. Jared Polis declared a state of emergency to begin coordinating the state’s response to the impending lack of water.

At the local and regional level, many water utilities — including Denver Water — have enacted outdoor watering restrictions for the spring and summer. Aurora City Council is also discouraging restaurants from automatically serving water to guests, in an effort to count ‘every single drop.’

Re: “As Lake Powell’s levels recede, life reemerges,” June 7 news story

Congress should demand that the Bureau of Reclamation accelerate its efforts to modify Glen Canyon Dam to allow more water to flow from Lake Powell to Lake Mead. Doing so would enhance water security for the millions of people and vast agricultural regions in Arizona, California, Nevada and Mexico that rely on water from Lake Mead. It would protect hydropower production at Hoover Dam, which has about 60% more generating capacity than Glen Canyon Dam. It would also support the ongoing ecological restoration now flourishing in Glen Canyon.

Lake Mead is less than 30% full and can accommodate more than three times the water currently stored in Lake Powell.

According to the Bureau’s of Colorado River conditions, Lake Powell will drop below 3,500 feet throughout the entire first quarter of 2027. At that elevation, hydroelectric generation at Glen Canyon Dam will be severely curtailed, despite unprecedented actions to prop up the reservoir.

The same forecast projects that Lake Mead will fall to a level at which, for nearly a year, the cost to operate and maintain Hoover Dam will exceed revenues from hydroelectric sales.

The Bureau has been studying potential modifications to Glen Canyon Dam for years, but does not expect to complete even its “appraisal study” until the end of 2026.

Congress should appropriate funds immediately and direct the Bureau to develop the plans and engineering designs required to construct major modifications to Glen Canyon Dam — changes that would ensure significantly more water can be delivered downstream to Lake Mead.

Ronald L. Rudolph, Golden

Dems should ‘close ranks’ around Platner

Re: “Democrats cannot ignore Platner’s many red flags and hold the moral high ground,” June 7 commentary

Moral high ground? Elections are not about morals. They are about power — who gains power, how they are exercising power and accountability for that power.

Elections are not dating events. Voters do not choose a mate. A pure heart, an unimpeachable background, perfect manners and a dental plan do not matter. Graham Platner is not running to be Maine’s sweetheart. He is running for one of its Senate seats.

Platner is Maine’s Democratic Senate candidate. There is no other. It is him against Republican Susan Collins, who talks centrist and votes extremist. He is the Democratic candidate because he, as columnist Doug Friednash laments, “…has been leading in the polls and offers the party a chance to beat Susan Collins.” Democracy in action.

For the sake of us, the people, our country and the planet, Democrats must now regain power. Only with power can they combat the corruption and the chaos, legislate for the people, and reverse the prevailing “….pattern of offensive and vulgar conduct” that Mr. Friednash sanctimoniously and wrongfully attributes to Platner, and which the current regime inflicts on us, the people, every day, all day long.

A covered-up Totenkopf tattoo? Cute, considering Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s uncovered vile white supremacist tattoos and corresponding vile, white supremacist activities. Foul language? Who cares in light of President Trump and Co.’s incessant sewage tweets? Impure manners towards women who are not his wife? He is not commanding them to “be quiet, piggy” or bragging about grabbing their nether regions without consent.

Those who want Dems to gain power must close ranks behind Dem candidates, not sabotage them with irrelevant purity tests.

Floy Jeffares, Lakewood

Hetal Doshi for Attorney General

Re: “Vote Michael Dougherty for Colorado attorney general in the Democratic primary,” June 7 editorial

I am challenging the Denver Post����ap endorsement of Michael Dougherty for Colorado’s attorney general. The reasons given for the endorsement focused on his local experience. While admirable, it is my opinion that Hetal Doshi has more credible state and federal experience.

Doshi has already managed a staff of over 800 and will hit the ground running. She has well-established relationships with attorneys general throughout the country. She has taken on and won huge antitrust cases.

Both Dougherty and David Seligman will strive to do well by Colorado. That said, Doshi’s depth and breadth of experience, along with her bipartisanship, professionalism and temperament, make her the strongest candidate. We need Hetal Doshi’s leadership at this critical period.

Alice Applebaum, Denver

DeGette should remain in the U.S. House

Re: “DeGette has served 15 terms, but has she been effective?” May 31 news story

Yes! Rep. Diana DeGette is effective.

As a resident of Colorado House District 1, I’m affected by the leadership of our district. For years, I’ve supported Rep. DeGette, and I continue to do so. Not because she and I are both getting along in years (that would be blatant agism, much like candidate Melat Kiros is doing in her campaign materials), but because she’s been an excellent representative.

Experience must count for something, and that����ap what I see lacking in Kiros’ materials. I see no experience with the political process; I see no grassroots work in the community; I see no elected or appointed political positions, not even in high school or college. How do we know she’ll work effectively?

It doesn’t matter how often she claims she’ll work for universal Medicare. If she doesn’t know how to function as an elected official, she’ll be ineffective. Rep DeGette’s office has always responded to inquiries, has always communicated with her constituents, and has always been informed about the details and possible repercussions of political doings.

Bonnie McCune, Denver

Hickenlooper should remain in U.S. Senate

Re: “Is Hickenlooper the one to fight Trump, or should voters give Gonzales a chance?” June 10 editorial

The Denver Post passed the buck by not endorsing either U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper or state Sen. Julie Gonzales. Call me old-fashioned but I believe Hickenlooper’s approach to statesmanship is what is needed.

Gonzales is apparently qualified and has demonstrated a zeal for change; however, I am troubled when persons aspiring to political office make claims that are unrealistic and, quite frankly, not possible in the current situation. Elimination of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is not feasible. There is much I find unconscionable about ICE, but it needs to be reformed, not eliminated.

Hickenlooper has demonstrated an aptitude for accomplishment, quiet, unheralded, and consistent. As mayor of Denver, governor of Colorado and senator, he has been businesslike, steady and knowledgeable.

Gonzales alleges some financial impropriety on Hickenlooper’s part, but The Post rightfully points out that he has been judicious about placing his finances in a “blind trust,” encouraging other senators to do the same. Gonzales says that she wants Medicare for all and will abolish private health insurance. I am sorry, but this demonstrates a naivete and lack of certainty in what this means in terms of costs and practicality.

No one doubts that Trump has to be curtailed, but remember, no one senator can effect change individually; it must be done by consensus and compromise.

Philip Arreola, Denver

Editor’s note: The policy of The Denver Post and its sister papers in Tribune and Media News Group is not to endorse in U.S. Senate and gubernatorial races.

Let Russell Wilson have his broadcasting shot

Re: “Wilson’s a Hall-of-Famer, but he’ll be brutal,” June 7 sports commentary

Sean Keeler has decided to carry on the nasty comments on Russell Wilson into a brand new TV job for him before he even has his first try at it. Okay, let’s remind Keeler to give people a chance. I’m sure people have done that for him and haven’t trashed him before he even started his reporting career. Back off!

Dea Coschignano, Wheat Ridge

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