It’s about the time of year for the casino industry to put out its annual news release that the industry will “honor” veterans on Veterans Day, November 11, in “special ways.” Veterans can get free or discounted meals (some specify the meals are from a limited menu) that day. They also can get a card for some free play, or spin a wheel for a chance at a free play card, or get complimentary tickets to a casino entertainment venue—stuff like that.
Of course, the casinos hope the veterans will drop a few dollars at the tables or the slot machines while they are there.
The truth is the casinos care about our veterans only in terms of how much they can take from their pockets and with sports wagering, their regard for veterans sinks to a new low.
“We give back generously,” says the industry’s Missouri web page. Rubbish.
If you are a veteran, know a veteran, and/or are part of a veterans group, you need to read what we are going to tell you today about the sports betting proposal on the November ballot, Amendment 2, and circulate it. It makes our veterans even bigger losers than they have been. The casino industry behind this proposition could have written it to solve a major financial problem affecting our veterans. It did not do it.
Should veterans vote for it? It’s up to them. But they should understand that the proposal does more TO veterans than it will do for veterans.
Basic fact: Missouri has seven veterans nursing homes that provide 1238 long-term skilled nursing beds. They are in Cameron, Mexico, St. James, Warrensburg, St. Louis, Cape Girardeau, and St. James.
Their major source of funding is from the casino $2 admission fee. Funds raised from that fee go to the Missouri Gaming Commission, which uses some of that money to pay for regulation of the casino industry. Nine million dollars a year are earmarked for the Access Missouri College Scholarship program and the National Guard Trust Fund that provides money for military rites at veterans’ funerals. A tiny amount goes to deal with problem gambling, if the Mental Health Department asks for it from the commissoion. After those deductions are taken, the remainder goes to the Veterans Commission Capital Improvements Trust Fund—which provides money for the seen nursing homes.
Admissions fees at our casinos that go to the veterans homes have been declining from $30.5 million in fiscal year 2012-2013 to just $11.2 million ten years later, a decline of 63%.
A report given to the Veterans Commission in July showed one-third of the nursing home beds were empty. It also showed the average daily cost of providing care had risen from $265 in 2018 to $469 in 2024, a 77% increase—and the purchasing power of each dollar was about 48 cents. .
Veterans Commission representative Aimee Packard told me last week, “Thankfully, the Governor and General Assembly have provided additional state funding to help ensure we are able to continue to care for Missouri’s Veteran heroes.”
Understand something else. These figures represent raw dollars. Because the 1993 law that established the two-dollar admission fee had no escalator clause in it, the admission fee has never been increased to account for inflation. The purchasing power of a 1993 dollar was only 47.5 cents in the most recent fiscal year, meaning the veterans homes are getting far less cash than they did a decade ago while the purchasing power of the buys a lot less at a time when the costs of care are substantially higher.
In other words, the Bureau of Labor Statistics calculated, as of Monday, the contemporary equivalent of two 1993 dollars is $4.42. The casinos are paying the state two 1993 dollars with purchasing power of only 92 cents while they keep $2.42 in contemporary money. They are making more money on the admission fees than the state is making.
How’s that for supporting our veterans—which the industry has many times patted itself on the back for doing?
What does this mean for sports wagering and veterans?
Simply this: Amendment 2 does nothing to stop this admission fee shortfall. Why?
Industry forecasts dating to 2019 were that 90% of all sports wagers would be done remotely within ten years after the wagering is legalized, meaning there will be no admissions for 90% of all sports wagers.
Will the 10% of bettors who walk through the turnstiles to bet on sports be enough to offset the ongoing 2-3% in overall annual admissions? If it does, the amount of money generated for veterans will be minimal.
And the casinos will pocket all of the revenue from remote sports betting without “contributing” (as they like to phrase it) a dime to the veterans nursing home fund.
Here’s the truth. The casinos like to brag that they have “contributed” or “donated” (by now) $400 million to veterans nursing homes.
You know what donations and contributions are, don’t you? That’s the money you voluntarily drop into the red kettle at Christmas, the pledge you make to Alzheimer’s Walks and Cancer runs, the envelope you drop in the tray at worship services, the check you write to the United Way.
In 2012, when Governor Nixon asked the legislature to increase the admission fees by one dollar, the casino industry sent letters to Missouri newspapers saying (in excerpts): “As good corporate citizens, casinos do more than their fair share for military veterans…. No single industry in Missouri provides that kind of financial support to veterans programs…. We honor and support our military veterans and will continue to do so, and we ask legislators to find an equitable source of funding for veterans homes.”
No single industry provides that kind of support to veterans? If the veterans homes had to rely on “that kind of support,” there would be a lot of boarded-up windows and “no trespassing” signs in a neglected yard.
“As good corporate citizens, casinos do more than their fair share for military veterans?” Doing their “fair share” for veterans. Their fair share has withered in the last decade. The casinos have an interesting definition of “fair share,” don’t they.
With friends such as this, who needs enemies?
Let us be abundantly clear: The casino industry has provided money to the gaming commission and its worthy causes that include veterans only because state law FORCES the industry to make those payments. If this industry was such a great supporter of veterans and their nursing homes, wouldn’t you think it would have voluntarily maintained funding for those it might give a free or reduced-cost meal to on Veterans Day?
The casinos and their sports teams enablers could have written their proposed amendment to establish some kind of remote wagering fee that would stop the financial bleeding for the gaming commission and the veterans nursing homes.
But, no. They didn’t. The casino industry wants to pocket every dime it can, veterans be damned.
So much for giving back generously.
The Veterans Commission Nursing Home program is able to operate only because the legislature for several years has taken money away from other programs to keep the nursing homes open, even at a reduced level.
Before you vote to legalize sports wagering in Missouri, think what you are doing TO our veterans, not for them.
Ask yourself: to whom do we owe a greater allegiance: casinos and millionaires playing sports—or our veterans. And our schools.
If a ten percent tax on sports wagering proposed in the sweetheart deal that is called Amendment 2 will generate $100 million dollars for schools in the next five years, that means the casinos are going to have revenues of more than One BILLION dollars.
A few table scraps will fall to the floor for veterans.
Who needs money more—casinos or veterans and schools? Amendment 2 might produce a drop in education’s bucket. But the veterans bucket will be increasingly dry.
Maybe it would be better for the people you elect to have the courage to represent their constituents on gambling issues. But it’s going to take more political courage than I have seen for several years to do it.
Think about it. Feel free to circulate these postings to your teachers, teacher groups, and veterans and their groups.
Vote how you want. But understand who will be paying for you to have a chance to lose money betting on a sporting event. Our schools and our veterans, that’s who.
There’s a third group that will get the shaft if Amendment 2 passes: the casinos’ own host cities. The casinos don’t give a damn about them, either. That’s next.
One last thing today: We have a comment box at the bottom of each of these entries. Several months ago, a person with the industry was heard in a crowded restaurant where were having dinner with friends say to them—in a voice loud enough to be heard by many of the other diners, “Don’t listen to him; he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
We invite the casino industry to use that box below to prove it.