Nevada tickets in Canada: how a pull-tab deal is built and what it pays back

A Nevada ticket is a small piece of cardboard with perforated windows. You tear the tabs off, and the symbols underneath either match a winning combination printed on the back or they do not. The name has nothing to do with the state: across Canada these are also called break-open tickets or pull-tabs, and they are one of the oldest tools charities use to raise money. Ontario's regulator defines them as cardboard tickets with perforated cover window tabs that hide winning and losing numbers or symbols, played by tearing the tabs off.

What makes them interesting for a player is that the payback is not a mystery. Every approved ticket type has a fixed number of tickets and a fixed pot of prizes, and Ontario publishes those figures. That lets us do some honest arithmetic.

How a deal is built: boxes, types and prize structures

The industry vocabulary is precise, and the AGCO lottery manual spells it out. A deal is one separate series of tickets with the same serial number. Deals are packed in sealed boxes. A ticket type fixes three things: how many tickets are in the deal, the price of each ticket and the total prize value. The style is the artwork and prize structure, such as bells, boats or fruit symbols. The same type can come in many styles.

The prize structure is the list of winning tickets inside the deal. The AGCO gives one example: 223 winning tickets worth C$1,015 in total, made up of one C$300 prize, four C$100 prizes, one C$50 prize, two C$25 prizes and 215 prizes of C$1. Note how lopsided that is. Almost all winners return only a dollar, and a handful of tickets carry the headline money.

Tickets are sold from a clear container that the attendant reaches into, or from an approved dispenser. The AGCO also notes that a deal must not be split between dispensers or containers, so the whole series sits in one place until it sells out.

What the published tables say a deal pays back

Ontario's Schedule of Approved Break Open Ticket Types lists, for each type, the ticket price, the ticket count, the prizes per deal and the "win", which is gross sales minus prizes. Dividing prizes by gross sales gives the payback. A few entries from that schedule:

I ran the same division over every row of the schedule where the printed price, count, prizes and win were internally consistent. That was 58 ticket types. Their paybacks ranged from 60% to 70%, with a median of about 66.5%. So a typical Ontario break-open ticket returns roughly two-thirds of what players put in. That is a far weaker return than most casino games, which is the price of a product whose real purpose is fundraising.

A worked example in C$

Take the BN4 type: 2,520 tickets at C$1, C$1,675 in prizes. Gross sales are C$2,520, so the charity-and-industry "win" is C$845. If you spend C$5 on BN4 tickets, the average return is 5 x 0.665, or about C$3.32. Your expected loss is about C$1.68, or 33.5% of what you spend. Spend C$100 and the long-run expectation is a loss of roughly C$33.50, though in any single session you may see anything from nothing to a C$100 prize.

Now follow the C$845. The schedule caps allowable expenses as a percentage of that win: 31.25% for a licensee's own location or a non-pooling bingo hall, and 35.25% if a dispenser is used. On BN4 at an own location, expenses can therefore take at most about C$264, leaving at least about C$581 for the charity. When tickets go through a third-party retailer, the schedule lists separate caps for the equipment supplier (14%), the services supplier (12.75%), the retailer (20.75%), a charity administration fee (0.75%) and the dispenser (4%). If every cap were used on BN4, the charity would still keep at least about C$437 of the C$845.

Why your odds change as the box empties

Because the prize pot is fixed inside a finite deal, your chance on the next ticket depends on what has already come out. Suppose, purely as an illustration, that a deal of 2,520 tickets holds C$1,675 in prizes and 2,000 tickets have sold. On average about C$1,329 of prizes should be gone by then (2,000 / 2,520 x C$1,675), leaving about C$346 across 520 tickets, again around 66.5 cents per dollar. The payback only improves if the deal has run cold. If just C$1,000 had been paid out, the remaining 520 tickets would hold C$675, or about C$1.30 per C$1 ticket.

In practice that edge is hard to use. You cannot see how many tickets have sold or which prizes have already been claimed, and a seller has no obligation to tell you. Treat "a big prize is still in there" as a sales line, not a strategy. Each ticket is still a negative-expectation bet, and the expected loss per dollar never disappears just because the deal is old.

Who licenses them, and where you can buy

The legal footing is in the Criminal Code. Section 207(1)(b) makes it lawful for a charitable or religious organization, under a licence issued by the Lieutenant Governor in Council of a province or a person or authority the province designates, to run a lottery scheme if the proceeds go to a charitable or religious purpose. Each province then builds its own system. See our overview of Canadian gambling laws for the bigger picture.

In Ontario the AGCO's Registrar licenses provincial charities and can license tickets sold alongside another licensed event, such as a bingo, while municipalities license local charities. A municipality such as Chatham-Kent requires a licence application at least ten business days before sales begin, and any business selling tickets for a charity must register as a seller with the AGCO. Only one eligible organization may be licensed to sell at a given address at one time, and every ticket must carry the licence number.

In Alberta the equivalent is the AGLC pull ticket licence. Only registered charities and religious groups can hold it, a person must be at least 18 to buy or win, and the licensee must pay every winning ticket from units it has sold. The AGLC can inspect every place tickets are sold or kept and can suspend or revoke a licence for non-compliance.

Sales venues follow from that. The Ontario schedule names bingo halls, a licensee's own location and third-party retailers, which municipalities describe as places such as variety stores. If you are curious about the bingo side, our bingo guide covers how those halls work.

Where the money goes

Alberta requires proceeds to fund AGLC-approved charitable or religious programs, and some uses, including bursaries, vehicles and wages, need prior approval. Ontario's provincial break-open licensees must show a broad benefit to residents across the province, and programs that are too narrowly focused, or that are competitions and scholarship programs, are ineligible for those proceeds. The honest summary: the largest single slice of each deal goes back to players as prizes, and the remainder is split between suppliers, the venue and the charity, with the charity's share depending on how the tickets were sold.

A short checklist before you buy

• Look for the licence number printed on the ticket and the charity's name. A licensed ticket carries both.
• Check the prize list on the back or on the display, and the ticket price. Higher-priced tickets do not change the typical two-thirds payback in the published tables.
• Set a cash amount before you open the first tab and stop when it is gone. Tabs are fast, which makes it easy to lose track.
• Remember the minimum age: 19 in most provinces, 18 in Alberta, Manitoba and Quebec.
• Treat it as a donation with a small chance of a prize, not as income. If the spending stops being fun, our responsible gambling page lists tools, and in Ontario you can call ConnexOntario on 1-866-531-2600.