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Something I’ve written about often: online sports gambling is very bad [ [link removed] ]. But because Missouri voters passed Amendment 2 [ [link removed] ] last year, as of this past Monday, it’s now legal across the state.
Ads for FanDuel, DraftKings, and other gambling platforms are inescapable everywhere these days, but that’s been especially true in Missouri over the last few months leading up to legalization.
I’ve argued for a long time that this will be bad for everyone. But it’s especially dangerous for our Armed Forces. Active-duty military personnel are already far more likely to have gambling addictions [ [link removed] ] than the rest of the population.
Now, we’ve given them unfettered access to sports gambling whenever they want. This is bad for our active-duty military, bad for our veterans, and bad for our national defense.
Article summary:
The military is predominantly young and predominantly male—exactly the demographics of people most vulnerable to predatory gambling apps.
“Investing” in cryptocurrencies is highly correlated with problem gambling, and our service members trade crypto at a much higher rate than the rest of the U.S.
Active-duty military (and veterans) are alarmingly at risk for gambling addiction. We must ban online gambling from military bases before the problem gets worse.
The inescapable barrage of gambling ads
A few weeks ago, KMOV ran a good segment [ [link removed] ] on the barrage of ads flooding Missouri’s airwaves in the lead-up to legalization earlier this week:
DraftKings, FanDuel, BetMGM, Caesars, bet365, Fanatics Sportsbook, theScore Bet, and Circa are all running ads and offering promos to new customers. Not a dime has been gambled yet, and already they’ve spent a lot of money on this:
Sports gambling advocates spent $46 million [ [link removed] ] to pass Amendment 2.
The companies above are spending tens of millions in ads to encourage new users in the state to sign up.
They’re offering all sorts of promotions: DraftKings and FanDuel are offering bet $5, get $300 promos; the other platforms are offering something similar. To paraphrase a friend, there’s not a drug dealer in the world offering a buy-one-get-60-free promo, which tells you just how addicting this stuff is.
Just for good measure, they’re not just paying for ads on TV and social media. On Monday, I got an email from Marriott—yes, the hotel brand—encouraging me to sign up for BetMGM, which you can see in the footnotes if you’re curious.
Men [ [link removed] ] and young people [ [link removed] ] are the most susceptible to gambling problems; young men [ [link removed] ] are the most vulnerable of all. And basically no one makes money on this stuff: a study that looked at over 700,000 sports gamblers found that fewer than 5% made any money [ [link removed] ].
To state the obvious: the gambling platforms are spending all of this money because they expect to fleece Missourians, just like they’ve fleeced Americans everywhere else in the country. And that includes our military.
The military is alarmingly vulnerable to gambling addiction
There have been a bunch of articles lately talking about the risks that gambling, online or otherwise, creates for our Armed Forces:
Wired: “The Big Money and High Cost of the US Military’s On-Base Slot Machines [ [link removed] ]”
The Wall Street Journal: “Top Gun Traders: Stock Bets and Crypto Culture Take Over the Military [ [link removed] ]”
The Guardian: “‘Gambling addiction on steroids’: fears of betting crisis at heart of US military [ [link removed] ]”
Task & Purpose: “Gambling addiction in the military may be going unnoticed, advocates warn [ [link removed] ]”
It’s worth noting that our military, demographically, doesn’t look that much like the United States. You know who it looks a lot like? Sports gamblers and online gamblers.
Like gamblers, our Armed Forces are younger and more male than the general population—the two groups most vulnerable to the dangers of online gambling.
It’s no surprise then that active-duty service members are 3× likelier [ [link removed] ] than civilians to gamble online, or that service members are 2× likelier than the civilian population [ [link removed] ] to have gambling problems.
This is an enormous, and growing, crisis among our Armed Forces. And that makes it a crisis of national safety and defense.
Our Armed Forces are being exploited by these apps
As tough as this may be, set aside for a moment the risks of bankruptcy, addiction, domestic violence, and suicide—all of which are correlated with gambling online. Online gambling is eating up a lot of time that our service members should be spending on their work.
What proof do I have? As I noted above, online gambling platforms release very little data (obviously) about how much money and time people are throwing away. But we can look at how people are gambling on cryptocurrencies.
I’ve argued before that cryptocurrencies, and get-rich-quick investing generally, aren’t any different from gambling:
Here’s a quick look at the data to back up that claim:
People who gamble are more likely to trade cryptocurrencies [ [link removed] ].
Cryptocurrencies appeal far more to problem gamblers [ [link removed] ] than to the general public.
Crypto traders are—surprise!—generally young and generally male [ [link removed] ].
I bring this up because while most of what we know about online gambling on military bases is anecdotal, there’s growing data around how much cryptocurrency trading there is.
A recent [ [link removed] ]WSJ [ [link removed] ] article [ [link removed] ] said that service members are, “trading tips on obscure cryptocurrencies from the decks of aircraft carriers.” Military bases have some of the highest rates of crypto trading anywhere in the country:
Given everything we know—that service members are far likelier to be problem gamblers and that cryptocurrency traders are far likelier to engage in problem gambling—it’s a safe bet that they aren’t just trading crypto tips from the decks of aircraft carriers. They’re almost certainly gambling too.
Gambling is a violation of Section 2-501 of the Joint Ethics Regulation [ [link removed] ] (JER), which prohibits “gambling activities with Government equipment, on Government property, or while on duty.”
And even when they aren’t working, 30% of active-duty military personnel live on a base [ [link removed] ], and another 13% live in government-leased housing. By the letter of the JER, they shouldn’t ever be allowed to gamble at home.
But the new status quo, one that allows online gambling on base, leaves them more vulnerable to addiction than ever before.
Ban online gambling from military bases
People can see the impact that sports gambling is having on their friends and family, so it’s no surprise that a growing percentage of Americans agree that it’s bad for society [ [link removed] ].
The sports gambling lobby has become incredibly powerful, and it won’t be easy to roll back sports gambling legalization efforts that have taken hold all over the country.
But one thing we can push for: a ban on online gambling and on sports gambling on military bases.
Of service members stationed in the U.S., 48% are in states where online sports gambling is legal. By gambling on base, they’re violating military policy. But much more importantly, it’s an activity to which they’re uniquely vulnerable.
That doesn’t just hurt our military. It hurts all of us.
By banning their apps from Fort Leonard Wood, Whiteman Air Force Base, and other installations around the state, voters and lawmakers in Missouri can protect our military, our service members, and our national security.
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