The Minnesota Gambling Control Board on Tuesday approved the state’s first electronic pull tab games, launching one of the state’s strategies for paying for the new Vikings stadium, the Star Tribune reports.
The panel approved five pull-tab games made by a Las Vegas company, and a few bars and restaurants that include Mancini’s Restaurant and O’Gara’s Bar and Grill in St. Paul were poised to offer them as early as Tuesday, the newspaper reports.
“We’re very excited,” Dan O’Gara told MPR as the devices, iPad tablets with dedicated gambling software, were prepared Monday night. He planned to bring them out for customers at 4 p.m. Tuesday.
The state is expecting the games to bring in as much as $72 million in new revenue – a good chunk of the $350 million the state has pledged for the construction of the new Vikings stadium to replace the Metrodome in downtown Minneapolis, MPR notes.
The Minnesota Sports Facility Authority wants to move quickly to begin work on the new stadium, to open in 2016, and plans to announce an architect for the project in early October.
