North Dakota’s 53 counties, shaded by charitable gaming adjusted gross proceeds per resident in fiscal year 2022. The five tribal areas are hatched, the five tribal casinos are marked, and the ten largest cities are labelled. Select a county to read its record.
All games of chance conducted under state charitable gaming licences, fiscal year ended 30 June 2025.
Gross proceeds count money wagered, including winnings replayed by the same player, so the figure behaves more like handle than like revenue. Adjusted gross proceeds of $256,615,556 is the comparable revenue measure. Eligible use contributions ($95,129,949) are lower than net proceeds ($102,647,277) because some net proceeds remain in trust accounts undisbursed at year end. This is the Attorney General's preliminary report.
| Measure | All games | Electronic pull tabs | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gross proceeds | $2,524,757,027 | $2,312,210,717 | 91.6% |
| Prizes paid | $2,237,494,272 | $2,069,077,802 | 92.5% |
| Adjusted gross proceeds | $256,615,556 | $243,684,014 | 95.0% |
| Percent of hold | — | 10.53% | — |
Gross proceeds and charitable disbursement, fiscal years 2015 through 2025. The two quantities are plotted separately because they are measured on different scales; a single chart with two axes would misstate their relationship.
| Fiscal year | Gross proceeds | Eligible use contributions | Share |
|---|
Authorised by House Bill 1216 in 2017. Devices began operating 14 August 2018.
The Legislative Council's April 2026 memorandum reproduces this series shifted one year earlier than the Attorney General's own fiscal year labels: it reports $711,223,072 against fiscal year 2019, where the Attorney General's fiscal year 2019 report gives $349,653,609 and its fiscal year 2020 report gives $711,223,072. The figures on this plate follow the Attorney General's labels. The memorandum lists fiscal year 2020 as "not reported."
| Provision | Limit |
|---|---|
| Maximum payout per deal | 90% of gross proceeds |
| Maximum prize, single winning combination | $500 |
| Maximum ticket price | $2 |
| Tickets per deal | 2,000 – 15,000 |
| Deals commingled per game | 2 |
| Devices per site | 10 |
| Game titles selectable per device | 12 |
| Minimum age, posted on the device | 21 |
| Credit ticket voucher validity | Same business day; void if it leaves the site |
| Skill element | None permitted in determining a prize |
What the constitution requires, what the statute defines, and the limits that apply to sites and devices.
Section 25 of Article XI of the Constitution of North Dakota permits the Legislative Assembly to authorise nonprofit organisations to conduct games of chance "when the entire net proceeds of such games of chance are to be devoted to educational, charitable, patriotic, fraternal, religious, or other public-spirited uses."
North Dakota Century Code section 53-06.1-11 permits an amount equal to 60 percent of adjusted gross proceeds per quarter to be deducted as allowable expenses, which "may be used for any purpose that does not violate gaming laws or rules." Net proceeds, the quantity the constitutional provision governs, are defined as the remaining 40 percent.
| Provision | Value | Citation |
|---|---|---|
| Allowable expenses, share of adjusted gross proceeds | 60% | NDCC 53-06.1-11 |
| Net proceeds, share of adjusted gross proceeds | 40% | NDCC 53-06.1-11 |
| Gaming tax, adjusted gross proceeds to $50,000 | 1% | NDCC 53-06.1-12 |
| Gaming tax, adjusted gross proceeds above $50,000 | $500 + 12% | NDCC 53-06.1-12 |
| Electronic pull tab devices per authorised site | 10 | NDCC 53-06.1-03(3) |
| Sites per organisation | 15 | NDCC 53-06.1-03(3) |
| Site rent, first five devices | $75 / device / month | NDCC 53-06.1-11 |
| Site rent ceiling, all devices at one site | $1,250 / month | NDCC 53-06.1-11 |
| Manufacturer licence fee | $10,000 / year | NDCC 53-06.1-14 |
| Distributor licence fee | $2,000 / year | NDCC 53-06.1-14 |
| Organisation licence fee | $175 / city or county | NDCC 53-06.1-03(2)(b) |
| Statutory transfer to gambling disorder fund | $75,000 | NDCC 53-06.1-11.2 |
Organisations that were operating more than 15 sites before 1 January 2023 are exempt from the site limit. State law does not prohibit a licensed organisation from paying rent to an authorised site that the organisation owns or is affiliated with. Section 2 of Senate Bill 2334 (2025) directs the Legislative Assembly's interim Judiciary Committee to study the ownership of alcoholic beverage establishments by licensed charitable gaming organisations; that study is in progress.
| Count | Figure | As of |
|---|---|---|
| Active gaming sites | 940 | 27 February 2026 |
| Licences issued | 603 | 27 February 2026 |
| Electronic pull tab devices | 5,250 | 31 December 2024 |
| Sites with devices | 846 | 31 December 2024 |
| Licensed charitable organisations | 337 | Fiscal year 2025 |
| Of those, classified public-spirited | > 160 | Fiscal year 2025 |
State-licensed charitable gaming and tribal Class III gaming operate under separate legal regimes. Tribal provisions are taken from the amended compacts that took effect 19 December 2022, not from secondary summaries.
| Subject | Charitable gaming | Tribal Class III |
|---|---|---|
| Legal basis | N.D. Const. art. XI § 25; NDCC ch. 53-06.1 | Indian Gaming Regulatory Act; compact under NDCC 54-58-03 |
| Regulator | Attorney General's Gaming Division; State Gaming Commission | Tribal gaming commission; National Indian Gaming Commission |
| Operator eligibility | Nonprofit organisations domiciled in North Dakota, active two years, primary purpose not gaming | The tribe |
| Tax to the state | 1% / 12% of adjusted gross proceeds | None. State regulatory cost reimbursement capped at $10,000 per year (§ 25.1) |
| Required use of proceeds | Net proceeds, 40% of adjusted gross proceeds, to constitutionally specified uses | No percentage since December 2022. § 7.1 states intent only changed 2022 |
| Device limits | 10 per site; 15 sites per organisation | None, and none in any compact version (§ 3.6) |
| Wager limits | Blackjack $25; poker $1; paddlewheel $20 per spin | None since December 2022; set at the tribe's discretion (§ 3.4) changed 2022 |
| Prize limits | Electronic pull tab $500 per combination; raffle $25,000 | None |
| Payout rule | Each electronic pull tab deal may pay out no more than 90% of gross proceeds | Payout ratios under the compact; state inspects |
| Minimum age | 21 for pull tabs, electronic pull tabs, twenty-one, poker; 18 for quick shot bingo | 19, reduced from 21 in December 2022; 18 with military identification (§ 5.5) changed 2022 |
| Hours | Only when alcoholic beverages may be dispensed | No compact restriction |
| Online gaming | Prohibited, including online raffle hosting | Mobile Class III gaming and sports wagering permitted within reservation boundaries (§ 3.2) |
| Local approval of premises | City or county must authorise each site and may impose stricter conditions | None |
| Gambling disorder funding | $75,000 statutory transfer | $25,000 per tribe per year (§ 29.1) |
| State inspection | Attorney General examines books and records | State inspects electronic games at least annually; access without notice (§§ 24.1, 24.3) |
| Vendor licensing | Attorney General licenses manufacturers and distributors | Licensed by the tribe under IGRA and NIGC regulations (§ 19.1) |
| Self-exclusion | No state-administered programme | Not required by compact; operated by individual casinos |
| Premises | 940 authorised sites | 5 casinos operated by five tribes |
The American Gaming Association's February 2025 North Dakota fact sheet describes wager limits at section 3.2 of the compacts, a 10 percent economic development earmark, annual tribal reports to the state on that earmark, and a list of states in which vendors must hold a licence. None of those provisions appears in the compacts that took effect in December 2022. Section 3.2 is now titled Mobile Gaming. The fact sheet also states that tribes are not required to fund gambling addiction programmes; section 29.1 of each compact commits each tribe to $25,000 per year. The comparison above is drawn from the compact texts filed with the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
The five tribal-state compacts were executed 7 October 1992 and amended in 1999, 2013 and 2022. Three provisions changed materially in the most recent amendment.
| Provision | 1992 | 1999 & 2013 | 2022 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tribal spending requirement | 25% of adjusted gross revenues to economic development and social welfare, with a state audit right (§ VII) | At least 10% of net revenues to tribal economic development (§ 7.1) | No percentage. "The parties intend that gaming revenues be used for promoting tribal economic development, self-sufficiency, and strong tribal governments, consistent with applicable federal law" (§ 7.1) |
| Maximum wager, blackjack | $50 per hand | $100; $250 at two segregated tables | None |
| Maximum wager, electronic game | $5 per bet | $25 per bet | None |
| Maximum wager, roulette | Not authorised | $50 single bet | None |
| Minimum age | 21 | 21 | 19 |
| Device and facility limits | None | None | None |
| State revenue share | None | None | None |
The 2022 text sets maximum wagers "at the discretion of the Tribe, except that maximum wagers shall not exceed the Tribe's internal accepted risk management factors." The compacts run ten years from 19 December 2022 and renew automatically in ten-year terms unless the tribe or the governor gives written notice in the final year, or the Legislative Assembly directs non-renewal by a two-thirds majority in each house.
Legislative Council memorandum 25.9016.01000, dated August 2023, states that the five tribal casinos operate under compacts "last negotiated with the state in 2013." The 2022 amendments had taken effect eight months before that memorandum was published.
Gross income from gaming as reported on IRS Form 990, Part VIII line 9a, set against the organisation's total functional expenses for the same year. Latest available filing for each organisation.
| City | Year |
|---|
Organisations do not report gaming income on a uniform basis. Some report gross of prizes and some net of prizes. One organisation reported $41.7 million in gross proceeds to the Attorney General for a year in which its Form 990 shows $4.5 million. Any organisation using the net convention is understated in this table. Total functional expenses cover the organisation's entire operation, not its gaming operation alone, and the final column is a ratio of the two reported figures rather than a measure of charitable disbursement, which Form 990 reports separately.
Adjusted gross proceeds attributed to each of North Dakota's 53 counties in fiscal year 2022, and the same figure divided by 2020 census population. The same figures are mapped on Plate 01.
| All counties | $222,527,028 | — |
Total across all counties, $222,527,028. The highest figure per resident is Kidder County at $597 against a population of 2,395; the lowest is Sioux County at $24. Cass County, the most populous, generated the largest absolute total at $41,453,672 and $225 per resident. These are fiscal year 2022 figures from a study commissioned by the Charitable Gaming Association of North Dakota, not current Attorney General reporting.
Gaming measures before the Legislative Assembly, 2017 through 2025, with recorded outcomes. North Dakota meets in regular session in odd-numbered years; the next is January 2027.
| Session | Measure | Subject | Recorded outcome |
|---|
An exhaustive title-level screen of all bills in the 2017, 2019, 2021, 2023 and 2025 regular sessions and the 2021 and 2026 special sessions found no measure proposing a geographic restriction on electronic pull tab devices near tribal casinos, and no measure applying tribal casino device testing standards to electronic pull tabs. Both were requested by tribal representatives before the interim Taxation Committee during the 2019–20 interim. A provision contained in the text of an unrelated bill would not be caught by a title-level screen.
Administrative and criminal matters announced by the Attorney General or recorded in court proceedings.
| Date | Respondent | Disposition |
|---|---|---|
| 2 Mar 2026 | Beulah Convention and Visitors Bureau | Licence revoked; $50,000 civil penalty; $398,287 ordered returned to the gaming trust account. Findings included reported disbursements the organisation retained, and cheques written to "cash." Collateral penalties: NumberWorks LLC $2,500, Losson Leonard $2,500, Uncle Maddio's Pizza site authorisation suspended 90 days. |
| 4 Dec 2024 | East Main Investments LLC | Site authorisation suspended one year, six months deferred on three years' probation, plus costs. Admitted violations of N.D. Admin. Code § 99-01.3-02-05. |
| Jul 2023 | Western Distributing, Plains Gaming Distributing, Midwest Gaming Distributing | $125,000 in fines, the statutory maximum, plus $36,355.50 in costs; deferred licence revocation on three years' probation; named individual and immediate family required to leave all ownership and management roles. All three remain licensed distributors in fiscal year 2027. |
| 2025 | Steven Lyon, West Fargo Hockey Association | Pleaded guilty to felony theft of $68,853 from electronic pull tab machines; 30 days' jail and 18 months' supervised probation; restitution paid in full. |
| 2017 | Amy Grieger, West Fargo Hockey bingo | Pleaded guilty to theft exceeding $10,000; 30 days' jail, three years' supervised probation. |
| 12 Mar 2026 | Dallas and Nichole Rice, Souris Valley Bowmen | Charged following investigators' tally of unauthorised transactions exceeding $183,525.62. Charges pending at the date of compilation. |
Testimony recorded in the 2025 Legislative Management Final Report states that "money laundering is nearly impossible to detect or regulate and is occurring in North Dakota, although the state cannot quantify how frequently it occurs or in what amounts," and describes "bars strongarming the charities, enticements to bars to acquire sites, third parties entering the market to manipulate the charities, and entities creating nonprofits to collect gaming money."
Deb McDaniel, then director of the Gaming Division, told the interim Judiciary Committee on 7 March 2024: "We know it's happening, but can't quantify how frequently it occurs, or in what amounts." Describing a single case identified in the Fargo area, she said: "That's one report, on one device, we have 4,900 devices." Asked how it was found, she said: "It was a coincidence that we found it."
Five tribes hold Class III compacts with the state. No agency publishes revenue or employment figures for individual North Dakota tribal casinos.
| Casino | Tribe | Location | Opened |
|---|---|---|---|
| Prairie Knights Casino & Resort | Standing Rock Sioux Tribe | Fort Yates | Dec 1993 |
| Spirit Lake Casino & Resort | Spirit Lake Tribe | St. Michael | Jun 1996 |
| Sky Dancer Casino & Resort | Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians | Belcourt | 1993 |
| 4 Bears Casino & Lodge | Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation | New Town | Jul 1993 |
| Dakota Magic Casino & Hotel | Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate | Hankinson | Aug 1999 |
| Fiscal year | Regional gross gaming revenue | Change |
|---|---|---|
| 2021 | $372,306,820 | +56.0% |
| 2022 | $406,169,922 | +9.1% |
| 2023 | $425,875,203 | +4.9% |
| 2024 | $443,861,592 | +4.2% |
| 2025 | $439,790,197 | −0.9% |
National tribal gross gaming revenue reached $46,162,783,570 in fiscal year 2025, up 5.3 percent across 545 audited operations. Rapid City was the only one of eight regions to record a decline. The Commission states that "the year-over-year GGR change by region should not be used as a direct indicator of the local economy in any specific region," and that reported figures "include revenue which may have been earned up to 16 months prior to publication."
Statements on the record
Mark Fox, Chairman of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation, to the Tribal and State Relations Committee at New Town, 24 October 2025, as recorded in the committee minutes: "Since the introduction of electronic pull tabs, the 4 Bears Casino and Lodge has lost 60 percent of its revenue and employees." The minutes record roughly 200 to 225 people employed. This is the Legislative Council's summary of his remarks rather than a transcript.
Lonna Jackson-Street, Chairperson of the Spirit Lake Tribe, to the same committee at St. Michael, 13 May 2026: "The expansion of off-reservation gaming has reduced tribal gaming revenue." Vice-Chair Darren Walking Eagle stated that state monitoring of pull-tab machines is insufficient.
Collette Brown, then Gaming Commission executive director for the Spirit Lake Tribe, reported a 40 percent revenue decline in September 2019 and a 42 percent decline in the casino's bottom line in January 2020. These are two successive readings of the same period rather than conflicting figures. Brown was elected to the House of Representatives for District 9 and took office 1 December 2024; she sits on the Tribal and State Relations Committee.
The 2019–20 interim Judiciary Committee recorded testimony that revenue at tribal casinos had decreased 41 percent since electronic pull tabs were implemented, and that tribal officials "contended there may be a possible violation of the Gaming Compact between the state and the tribes." Neither committee made a recommendation.
No state or federal agency publishes employment figures for North Dakota tribal casinos. Bureau of Indian Affairs labour force reports cannot support a before-and-after comparison: the methodology changed between editions, some rows reprint prior-cycle data, and the 2013 edition states that its statistics "are not comparable to the statistics provided in any of the earlier American Indian Population and Labor Force Reports." The reports show employment at Fort Berthold rising from 447 to 1,459 between the 1991 and 1995 editions, with 4 Bears opening in 1993 employing 322 people. Over the same period the North Dakota portion of Standing Rock is recorded at 79 percent not employed in 1991, 86 percent in 1993 and 76 percent in 1995, with Prairie Knights having opened in December 1993.
Figures and claims that circulate in coverage of this subject and could not be traced to a primary document. They are excluded from the plates above and recorded here so that their absence is deliberate rather than silent.
Traces to a spoken statement by Collette Brown at a conference in Bismarck in January 2020, reported by Forum News Service on 3 February 2020. No study, audit or filing supports it. When carried into legislative testimony in February 2021 it was rendered as "the Spirit Lake Tribe's five casinos"; the Spirit Lake Tribe operates one casino.
Appears only in search summaries of an outlet whose pages could not be retrieved. The traceable figures are 40 percent (September 2019), 41 percent (2019–20 interim Judiciary Committee) and 42 percent (January 2020), all specific to the Spirit Lake Tribe, and 60 percent specific to 4 Bears (October 2025).
Appears in a Forum News Service report of 21 October 2022 as the reporter's own sentence rather than as a quotation from a named speaker. The named speaker, a casino employee, is quoted saying "We are not able to compete with the e-tab machines." Independent anchors are 420 employees at the 2012 reopening and an undated figure of 300.
31 CFR 1010.100(t) defines a casino as an entity licensed "as such" with gross annual gaming revenue above $1 million. Charitable gaming organisations are licensed as charities under NDCC ch. 53-06.1. No FinCEN ruling addressing charitable gaming operators was located, so the question is recorded as open rather than answered.
Legislative Council records that the Legislative Assembly authorised electronic video gaming in 1989 and that voters rejected it at a special election on 5 December 1989. The ballot language was not obtained, so no equivalence between that measure and the devices authorised in 2017 is asserted here.
Three attempts to read the association's 2019 annual report state summary produced three mutually inconsistent sets of figures. None is reproduced.
Kelly Armstrong served in the State Senate in 2017. The bill listing records no first name. The identification is not asserted.
The study prepared for the Charitable Gaming Association of North Dakota reports $73.9 million in charitable contributions and $19,856,122 in gaming taxes for fiscal year 2022. The Attorney General's report for the same year records $56,006,095 in eligible use contributions and $21,453,224 in gaming tax. The difference is unreconciled.
No figure was located in any primary or secondary source. Commercial data-broker estimates for this and other North Dakota casinos are mutually inconsistent and are not used.
No State Auditor or legislative performance audit of the programme was located. No economic impact study of North Dakota tribal gaming was located from any state agency or university.
Primary documents underlying these plates.