Colorado Bettors Wager $346M a Year on Table Tennis

Colorado bettors wagered about $346 million on table tennis during the fiscal year that ended in June, according to Colorado Division of Gaming figures reported Tuesday by Colorado Public Radio. That is roughly $948,000 every day, enough to make a sport with little mainstream American television presence responsible for more than 5% of all money wagered through Colorado sportsbooks. The number is even stranger when viewed against sports with enormous American audiences. In May alone, Colorado bettors put about $33.9 million on table tennis, compared with $27.4 million on soccer, $23.6 million on tennis and $21.9 million on ice hockey, according to an analysis of Division of Gaming figures published by RG.org. Only basketball and baseball drew more money among individual sports that month. Almost none of that table-tennis business was happening at casino betting windows. Of the $33.9 million wagered in May, all but about $4,000 was bet online. For Colorado, the relationship with table-tennis gambling goes back to the first days of legal sports betting in the state. Colorado sportsbooks began taking bets May 1, 2020, just as COVID-19 had shut down the NBA, NHL, Major League Baseball and most of the world's major sporting events. Table tennis was one of the few sports still producing games that bookmakers could put on their apps. During that first month, Coloradans wagered $6.5 million on table tennis out of $25.6 million in total sports bets, meaning about one-quarter of all money bet in the state's newly legal market went to table tennis, according to contemporary reporting by the Colorado Sun. When American sports returned, there was reason to think the table-tennis boom would disappear with the lockdowns. It did not. Unlike betting on a Broncos game and waiting three hours to see what happens, table-tennis bettors can move through matches and live odds quickly. A match can end and another can begin soon afterward. A new state law that took effect August 12 limits online bettors to six separate deposits during a gaming day, bars sportsbooks from sending push notifications soliciting bets or deposits and prohibits using credit cards to fund sports-betting accounts. The law also requires operators to begin providing the state with more detailed transactional data, with the first statewide report based on that information due in 2029. Table tennis presents another problem for regulators beyond the speed of the betting: figuring out exactly what competitions people are betting on and how closely those matches are supervised. Not every table-tennis match offered by sportsbooks is part of the Olympic-style international system most casual sports fans might expect. In February, the Massachusetts Gaming Commission conducted an unusually detailed examination of table-tennis betting and distinguished between competitions sanctioned by the International Table Tennis Federation and several privately operated leagues. The commission also consulted Sportradar, the International Betting Integrity Association and other monitoring organizations before recommending that four private competitions be removed from its approved betting catalog. The commission voted 5-0 to remove TT Elite Series Poland, TT Star Pro Series, TT Trophy Hungary and Challenger Series from Massachusetts sportsbooks in February. That was not the end of the story. Massachusetts regulators reconsidered TT Elite this summer after DraftKings petitioned to restore it. The commission ultimately voted in August to allow TT Elite wagering again following additional information about its integrity controls and betting-monitoring procedures. The other three private series remained excluded. Colorado has confronted similar problems before. In July 2020, only months after sports betting launched here, state regulators suspended wagering on Ukrainian table tennis after receiving integrity-monitoring information about possible match fixing and irregular betting patterns. Colorado officials said at the time they had not found evidence of manipulation within the Colorado betting market itself but suspended the games as a precaution. Westword reported on the Colorado suspension in 2020 Other states took similar action. New Jersey halted wagering on Ukrainian table tennis after receiving a sports-betting integrity alert concerning possible match fixing, while Indiana restricted betting to competitions sanctioned by recognized international or European governing bodies. The problem is still present internationally. The International Table Tennis Federation said in its own 2026 annual report that betting integrity and match manipulation remained a significant risk for the sport and that its Integrity Unit had received an increased flow of reports involving suspicious betting. The federation also said investigations were becoming more complicated while the integrity operation continued to face limited resources. In 2025, Britain's Gambling Commission announced sanctions against four Table Tennis England members after an international investigation that began with unusual wagering on matches played in Ukraine. Investigators found violations involving betting and inside information. None of that means the hundreds of millions of dollars bet on table tennis in Colorado are tied to fixed matches. Colorado regulators told CPR that they approve betting markets based on data integrity and fair play and work with sportsbooks and independent monitoring companies to watch for suspicious activity. The state does not publicly discuss individual ongoing integrity investigations. Colorado bettors wagered roughly $6.5 billion across all sports during the 2025-26 fiscal year, up about 2.3% from the year before. The state collected a record $47.2 million in sports-betting taxes. That means approximately one dollar out of every 19 wagered on sports in Colorado last fiscal year went to table tennis.