Pull Tabs in Ohio: Instant Bingo, Ticket Machines and Where to Play

If you are searching for pull tabs in Ohio and coming up empty, it is probably the name. Ohio law calls them instant bingo. Same paper ticket, same perforated windows, same flare on the wall. And Ohio has a lot of them: the Ohio Attorney General's 2026 list of authorized bingo locations runs 546 pages and 6,320 entries.

Instant Bingo Is Ohio's Pull Tabs

In Ohio, "bingo" covers three kinds of license, and the Attorney General's office issues all of them:

• Type I is traditional bingo: cards, a caller, a hall.
• Type II is instant bingo the charity sells itself, at its own bingo sessions or its own premises.
• Type III is instant bingo sold somewhere other than a bingo session, which in practice usually means a bar, a carryout or a gas station hosting a charity's tickets.

Type III is where nearly all the action is. Of the 6,320 entries on the 2026 list, 5,805 are licensed for Type III instant bingo. Only 720 are licensed for traditional bingo.

Yes, the Gas Station Tickets Are Charity Games

This is the part that surprises people. The business selling you the ticket is usually not a nonprofit, but the game is. In Ohio, only a licensed charitable organization can sell instant bingo. When a bar or gas station sells tickets, it is acting as a host for a charity whose license covers that address. Ohio law caps what the host can be paid, at a small percentage of each deal's receipts, and the rest of the profit goes to the charity.

Look at who holds the licenses and it shows. Of the 4,893 locations licensed for paper Type III instant bingo only, 4,859 are tied to 501(c)(3) charities: youth baseball and football clubs, parish schools, booster clubs, Lions clubs and local foundations. The biggest single license holder on the 2026 list, Galloway Baseball Club, has 117 locations.

The Machines in Gas Stations

If you have seen Ohio pull tab videos, you have seen the ticket machines. Since 2021, Ohio law has allowed charities to sell instant bingo through dispensers: currency-activated machines that sell the same paper tickets a person behind the counter would. A legal dispenser only sells tickets. It does not decide winners or play a game on a screen, and the tickets inside belong to a licensed charity's deal.

Companies run these programs for charities, placing machines in retail stores and handling the tickets. One of the best-known is ASG (All-Star Gaming), based in the Youngstown area, which says it works with around 190 charities and more than 2,800 businesses.

Electronic Instant Bingo

Ohio also allows electronic instant bingo, which is closer to Minnesota's e-tabs: you play on a terminal instead of tearing paper. It is more limited. Only veterans and fraternal organizations can offer it, and state law caps how many terminals a site can run and the hours they can be played.

The 2026 list bears that out. 914 locations are licensed for electronic instant bingo, and every one of them belongs to a veterans or fraternal group: 536 to veterans organizations like VFW and American Legion posts, 359 to fraternal lodges like the Eagles, Moose and Elks, and the rest to a handful of similar clubs. If you want to play on a screen in Ohio, the post or the lodge is where to look.

Where Instant Bingo Is Played

It is everywhere in Ohio, but it follows the population. Counting locations licensed for instant bingo on the 2026 list:

• Cleveland: 280
• Columbus: 257
• Cincinnati: 165
• Akron: 137
• Dayton: 131
• Toledo: 118

Smaller cities punch above their weight too. Youngstown, Canton, Zanesville, Sandusky, Lima and Mansfield each have 60 or more. And most Type III locations are licensed to sell seven days a week.

How to Check a Location

The Ohio Attorney General publishes the full list of organizations authorized to conduct bingo, with every licensed address, the type of license and the days of play. It lists the charity, not the business, so search it by street address. If a place is selling instant bingo and its address is not on the list, that is worth a question.

Ohio on FindPullTabs

We are working on adding Ohio's licensed locations to our map, so you can search your town the way players already can in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Washington. In the meantime, if you play at a bar, post or carryout in Ohio, submit it and we will add it.

New to the game? Our guide to what pull tabs are covers the basics, and the piece on payouts and odds explains how to read a flare, which works the same in Ohio as anywhere else.

Sources

Location counts are from the Ohio Attorney General's Authorized Bingo Locations list for 2026 (printed October 9, 2026). Rules on instant bingo, dispensers and electronic instant bingo are from Ohio Revised Code Chapter 2915. ASG's figures are the company's own.