Walk into a Minnesota bar, a VFW post, or a church fundraiser and you'll find the tablets and paper tickets — pull-tabs, e-tabs, the games that fund the youth hockey team and the food shelf. It feels local, small, charitable. The numbers are anything but small, and where the money actually ends up will surprise you.
In fiscal 2024, Minnesotans wagered $4,935,680,755 through charitable-gambling organizations — nearly five billion dollars, up 8 percent in a year and growing at nearly 14 percent annually for a decade. It is, by the state Gambling Control Board's own account, the largest charitable-gambling industry in the nation. Pull-tabs are 95 percent of it, and electronic pull-tabs — the tablet games — are the rocket fuel.
So who wins? Let's follow the money, using the state's own report.
The state out-earns the charities
Of every dollar wagered, about 85 cents goes back out as prizes — that's the nature of gambling. It's the remaining slice, the "net receipts," where the real story is.
Here's how the Gambling Control Board's FY2024 report breaks down that net:
- Taxes — state, federal, and local — took 28.0 percent. The single biggest slice.
- The actual charitable missions got 18.0 percent.
Read that again. The charities' taxes and fees ($207 million) exceeded the money they kept for their own missions ($139 million) by $67 million. The state made more off the "charitable" gambling than the charities did — and the Board's own charts show the state out-earning the charities every year since about 2021.
Put in per-dollar terms: of every dollar of net receipts, only about 20 cents actually reaches a charitable cause. Eighty-three organizations delivered under a dime on the dollar. The rest goes to prizes, allowable expenses, the companies that make the games, and — most of all — the state treasury.
I want to be fair: charitable gambling does fund real things, and the volunteers running the pull-tab booth at the youth-hockey fundraiser are doing honest work. But a system marketed as "charitable" in which the government is the largest single beneficiary, and the charity keeps a fifth, is not being described to the public honestly.
The problem-gambling number that should end the conversation
Here's the figure I can't get past. In fiscal 2024, Minnesota's charitable-gambling organizations collectively reported spending, as a charitable "lawful purpose," a grand total of $200 statewide on compulsive-gambling programs.
Two hundred dollars. Against $195 million paid that year in state gambling tax, off nearly five billion dollars in wagers, from a product that Wilder Research and the state estimate leaves about 56,000 Minnesotans as problem gamblers and another 162,000 at risk. The statute dedicates only a fraction of one percent of the pull-tab tax to problem-gambling treatment. A state that takes hundreds of millions from gambling and puts back a rounding error to help the people it harms is not balancing a ledger. It's running a concession stand and calling it a mission.
The slot-machine question and the stadium
Two more things Minnesotans should know.
The e-tabs got too good at pretending to be slot machines. As electronic pull-tabs exploded — net receipts up about 36 percent in two years, overtaking paper — they started looking a lot like the video slots that, under Minnesota's tribal-gaming compacts, only tribal casinos are supposed to offer. In 2023 the Legislature drew a line: e-tab games that "mimic a video slot machine" — spinning reels, bonus rounds, one-touch "open all" reveals — had to be pulled by the end of 2024. That fight isn't over, and it's really a fight about who gets to run slot-style gambling in Minnesota.
And the stadium. Part of the reason the state leaned into e-pull-tabs in the first place: the 2012 deal to build U.S. Bank Stadium dedicated the state's roughly $348 million share of that $1.06 billion stadium to be paid from new electronic pull-tab taxes. So a chunk of every tablet game in every Minnesota bar has been quietly retiring the debt on a professional football stadium. When you play the pull-tab, you're funding, in part, the Vikings' building.
What we can do
Tell the truth in the name. If the state is the biggest single beneficiary and the charity keeps 20 cents on the dollar, the public deserves that stated plainly — on the games, in the reporting, in the debate. "Charitable gambling" that funds the treasury first is a tax with a raffle attached, and Minnesotans can decide how they feel about it only if they know.
Fund problem gambling like you mean it. Two hundred dollars against $195 million in tax is indefensible. Dedicate a real, meaningful share of the gambling tax to treatment and prevention for the people the product harms. If the state is going to profit from gambling, it owes a serious duty to its casualties.
Publish where the charity money actually goes. The Gambling Control Board tracks this; make the "lawful purpose" spending genuinely transparent, organization by organization, so donors playing for a cause can see whether the cause is really getting the money.
And be honest about the slot-machine line. The e-tab fight is a real policy question about the tribal-gaming compacts and what kind of gambling Minnesota wants in its neighborhood bars. Have that debate in the open, not through the technical back-and-forth of what a tablet game is allowed to look like.
Minnesotans put nearly five billion dollars through these games last year in the name of charity. They're entitled to know that the charity comes fourth — after prizes, expenses, and the state. First the facts. Then the fix.
Sources
Minnesota Gambling Control Board, FY2024 Annual Report (published April 2, 2025), read from the report PDF: gross receipts of $4,935,680,755 (up 8 percent; 13.8 percent average annual growth since FY2015); the characterization of Minnesota's as the nation's largest charitable-gambling industry; pull-tabs as roughly 95 percent of receipts; net receipts of about $712 million with roughly $4.22 billion (about 85.6 percent) paid in prizes; the allocation of net receipts showing taxes at 28.0 percent versus charitable-mission spending at 18.0 percent; organizations' taxes and fees of $207 million exceeding retained mission funds of $139 million by $67 million; approximately 20 cents of each net-receipt dollar reaching charity and 83 organizations under 10 cents; and the $200 statewide charitable-purpose spending on compulsive-gambling programs against $195 million in state gambling tax. The 2023 electronic-pull-tab law (HF 1938 / 2023 session) as summarized in the Gambling Control Board's legislative summary: the ban on games mimicking video slot machines, the removal deadline of December 31, 2024, the 25 percent distributor-charge cap, and the reductions in combined net-receipts tax rates. Problem-gambling prevalence: Wilder Research and the Minnesota Department of Human Services (February 2020) — about 1.3 percent of adults (roughly 56,000) as problem gamblers and about 3.8 percent (roughly 162,000) at risk; the problem-gambling tax-dedication provisions of Minn. Stat. § 297E.02. Stadium financing: the 2012 stadium act dedicating the state's roughly $348 million share of the $1.06 billion U.S. Bank Stadium to electronic pull-tab tax revenue.
The exact current problem-gambling appropriation, Minnesota's national per-capita ranking on problem-gambling funding, and whether the Legislature enacted an early stadium-bond payoff were not confirmed this pass and are not asserted. Corrections: campaign@madgettformn.com.