It’s been more than 30 years since the first riverboat casino opened in Missouri. In 1992, the President Casino on the Admiral sat moored at the edge of the Gateway Arch lawn, on the Mississippi River. Upriver, on the Missouri River in St. Charles, just above where the Mississippi and Missouri merge, a second riverboat casino cruised for two hours at a time, and offered dockside gambling in between.
Gamblers paid a cover fee to get in, and “boardings” were allowed every two hours in St. Louis. The boat was a fixture along the riverfront, before it was shuttered in 2010 and sold for scrap. In St. Charles, a version of that first riverboat casino continues to operate, but cruising is no longer required.
My, how things have changed — Missouri is now home to 13 riverboat casinos, all permanently moored, and as of Dec. 1, 2025, retail and online sportsbooks were legal and live in the state. In FY 2026, the casinos paid the state $422 million in tax revenue.
With all the growth, both in real dollars and available gambling options, one thing hasn’t changed — Missouri continues to have one of the weakest responsible and problem gambling infrastructures in the U.S. The December launch of sports betting has shone a light on the issue. Earlier this month, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch published a story headlined “Missouri Has $5 Million A Year To Combat Sports Addiction. It’s Not Spending It.”
For those in the problem and responsible gaming sector, the headline is no surprise. In the 34 years since the first bet was placed on a riverboat, Missouri has done little to educate, counsel, or identify those who may be displaying addictive behavior.
State has historically underspent on PG/RG
Little money in Missouri has traditionally been set aside for problem and responsible gaming. When casinos were legalized, the law allowed for one penny per person who entered a casino to be set aside for addiction and education programs. That likely would have worked out to less than 10% of the $5 million that National Council for Problem Gambling (NCPG) Director Policy and Partnerships Cole Wogoman worked to get into the sports betting initiative that voters passed in November 2024.
The $5 million in Missouri is a minimum — the initiative calls for $5 million or 10% of wagering tax revenue, whichever is higher, to be set aside for addiction outreach and programs. Wogoman said the goal was for the amount of money available for programs to keep pace with the gaming population, but also to make sure funding is consistent.
“The reason we want the percentage of revenue is that we know that as more people gamble, there will be more problems,” Wogoman said. “The $5 million is the floor, so if you have a situation like 2020 [Covid] where gambling revenue totally shuts down, that doesn’t mean that people who are in recovery or wanting to be don’t need it. It keeps the systems in place.”
Missouri’s public health officials often didn’t spend those dollars — in 2023, the state spent $100,000 on problem gambling, and that was up from $0 in 2022. So despite a comprehensive and experienced regulatory regime, problem gambling has long been left behind in Missouri.
“There was barely anything to build off of,” problem and responsible gambling advocate Keith Whyte said. “I do give the folks at the state [mental health] agency a little bit of sympathy because they are building a system from scratch.
“There was no one there to kick and push them, which is what the state [NCPG] chapters do. What the state of Missouri hasn’t had for a very long time is an organized, funded advocate.”
The state does not have an NCPG chapter — it did, but it has since ceased operation — meaning that there has been no watchdog to keep the Department of Mental Health, tasked with implementing problem and responsible gambling programs, on its toes.
Wogoman said that in situations like Missouri’s, the NCPG’s national office may step in, but so far, state officials haven’t reached out. During the initiative process, Wogoman worked with the Sports Betting Alliance, which backed the initiative, for the earmark.
Whyte, the former executive director of the NCPG, is the founder and president of Safer Gambling Strategies, a gambling policy and fundraising consultancy. He and Wogoman said that while there is no excuse for what’s happened in the past in Missouri, the legalization of sports betting may be just what was needed to elevate the state’s efforts.
Stakeholders faced a similar situation in Colorado, which legalized sports betting in 2019 and had barely existent gambling addiction programs despite a long-established casino industry. State lawmakers included problem and responsible gaming funds in that state’s new law, and this year, the regulator awarded $3.7 million in responsible gaming grants.
“When it comes to a state like this, it was too good of a chance to pass up the opportunity to put up the system,” Wogoman said. “When a state is legalizing a new form of gaming, that is when you have to get in on the ground floor. If you come in later, you’re taking money away from somewhere else.”
That makes the effort more difficult, he said.
No one size fits all
Standing up a problem and responsible gambling program is not “plug and play,” as every state government is set up and functions differently. The Missouri Department of Health will have to craft its own unique program.
“Every state handles health and addiction differently,” Whyte said. “Generally, you’d want to start with the triage stuff, like getting a helpline up and getting substance abuse and mental health counselors cross-trained.”
Whyte said it would also be useful to get a “quick prevalence study” completed, so mental health professionals could understand who they are dealing with and what kind or level of addiction is out there.
Missouri Gaming Commission Executive Director Mike Leara told the Post-Dispatch that so far the Department of Mental Health has requested $636,166, which has been used for the kind of “quick prevalence studies” Whyte mentioned, as well as counselor training. Addiction funds were not made available to the Department of Health until February — three months after go-live.
Critics told the Post-Dispatch that Missouri should have had more staff, consultants, counselors, and advertising by now. But Whyte, who agrees that the state could have already done more, also said that from a practical standpoint, problem and responsible gambling are often an afterthought to tax dollars, jobs, and the other more tangible benefits politicians and stakeholders sell during the legalization process.
Wogoman said he would hope that Missouri would have some sort of meaningful problem and responsible gambling program in place at the one-year anniversary of launch in December, but like Whyte, agrees that it takes time and effort, and every state (and state agency) is different.
“Setting up a comprehensive and effective problem gambling treatment system is not like Field of Dreams — if you build it they will come,” Whyte said. “Gambling addiction is heavily stigmatized and poorly understood by the public. It takes aggressive outreach and, perhaps most important, lots of trust for people with problems to feel comfortable seeking help.
“It’s surreal treatment funds are going unspent. I suspect there is a tremendous unmet need. I hope the state will work with problem gambling experts and advocates to close the gap.”
‘Setting up these programs is hard’
Gambling addiction programs in Missouri will fall under the same umbrella as drug and addiction programs. While those with gambling addiction often count drug or alcohol addiction among their comorbidities, the treatment program for each addiction is unique. It’s possible in the early going that more money will go into building the system and may be pushed to existing abuse programs.
“The money is from gambling revenue, and it’s very clear that its purpose is for prevention and treatment of [gambling addiction],” Wogoman said. “We expect it should be spent that way, and not for other addictions.”
Though that might not be the intent of the new law, it’s worth noting that the Department of Health will be wiser to spend its funding than not — in Washington, D.C., after addiction funds were left unused, Mayor Muriel Bowser spearheaded a plan to defund problem and responsible gambling programs in 2023.
The move was a real-world application of the phrase “use it or lose it.”
Such a decision would likely be more difficult to implement in Missouri. Because sports betting was legalized by the voters, changing anything in the new law could require another constitutional amendment. The goal right now, however, is to ensure that the money raised by gambling taxes is used for intended purpose.
“It’s a delicate dance trying to add a whole new branch into an existing bureaucracy,” Whyte said. “There’s no template, and setting these programs up is hard.”
