They bet a bundle on it illegally each year.Īs the Ft. It’s just a rumor, but the last I heard Texans are obsessed with football. In the case of the Zia track, for instance, it’s located six miles from the Texas state line and 110 miles west of Lubbock. Supreme Court’s repeal of the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA.) It makes good financial sense – and not just because New Mexicans are sports crazy supporters of their university teams. With fewer than three dozen casinos spread out over the nation’s fifth largest state – but sixth least-densely populated with approximately 2 million residents – it faces challenges at several levels.īut you don’t need a team of MBAs to surmise that the action might get more interesting if New Mexico saw fit to legalize sports betting in the wake of the U.S. New Mexico offers a variety of legal gambling options with Native American casinos, a state lottery, recreational senior citizen bingo games, and horse racetrack and off-track betting. Although it has great potential, Zia Park is like many gambling operations whose customer base and eventual bottom line depends the popularity of horse racing and the predictability of snowfall. It didn’t take long to determine that if any place could have taken advantage of legalized sports betting, it’s lonesome Zia Park.