Colorado Bettors Wager $30M Monthly on Table Tennis

The air in a dimly lit living room hums with the low, electric buzz of a smartphone screen. A thumb swipes across glass, placing a bet on a match that will end before the next commercial break. It’s 2:00 a.m., and the only sound is the quiet tap of a finger on a digital table, a motion so small it barely disturbs the stillness of the house. This is the new face of gambling on the Western Slope, a quiet ritual that has grown into a financial chasm.

The Colorado Sun reported this week on a phenomenon that feels less like sports fandom and more like a slow leak in the hull of our state’s economy. Since online betting became legal, Coloradans have wagered over a billion dollars on table tennis. It’s an obscure sport to most of us, a game played in community centers and school gyms rather than stadiums, yet it has claimed the top spot on the Department of Revenue’s popularity lists month after month. In 2020, when professional leagues were shuttered by the pandemic, the average monthly wager on table tennis was $10 million. By 2025 and into the first half of 2026, that figure has tripled to $30 million a month.

That is a staggering amount of money for a game that most folks around here can’t even name the rules of. The article notes that table tennis is almost custom-made for addiction; matches are over in ten minutes, and they happen at all hours. They are the slot machines of sports betting, spinning and clicking in the dark while the rest of the world sleeps. If you look closely at these dry government reports, you can feel the weight of that $30 million. It’s not just revenue; it’s money leaving pockets, often from people who didn’t realize they were gambling until the balance hit zero.

The problem isn’t just that we’re betting; it’s that we don’t know who is bleeding. A national survey suggests 10% of Americans use online gambling services, which would put the number of online gamblers in Colorado at roughly 480,000. But research indicates that a small minority of users — about 10% — account for 80% of the activity. That implies there could be as many as 70,000 "power users" in the state, each gambling an average of $70,000 a year. For many neighbors in the valley, that isn’t a statistic; it’s a mortgage payment or a tuition bill disappearing into an app.

We are flying blind because the state doesn’t collect individual-level data. The Department of Revenue tells us how much is wagered in the aggregate, but it doesn’t tell us who is chasing losses. It doesn’t tell us how many people are depositing money repeatedly after a loss or using multiple platforms to hide their habits. The Colorado Sun argues that regulators should demand more robust reporting, requiring sportsbooks to share anonymized data on individual behavior so researchers can actually see the patterns of problem gambling.

Right now, we’re just seeing the top line. We know the money is moving, but we don’t see the people holding the phones in their kitchens or on their commutes to work. The data is missing, and with it, our ability to understand the scale of the trouble lurking under the surface. Until regulators force the industry to open its books on individual habits, we’re left guessing about the human cost of a game that ends in ten minutes but can take years to recover from.

The screen goes dark, the phone slides into a pocket, and the house settles back into silence. The only evidence of what happened is a notification in an inbox, a small, bright rectangle of light that promises the next match is already starting.