How many video-lottery terminals does the city license, and how are they stacked?
Asked August 25, 2026 Figures as of October 12, 2026
2,256 terminals, at 243 of the city's 697 licensed places, and they are stacked to the limit. State law caps a licensed establishment at 10 terminals; 202 of the 236 places with a recorded count sit exactly there, and those ten-terminal places hold 90% of every terminal in the record. Only 34 recorded places sit below the cap. The cap is per licensed establishment, not per building, and the register shows the stacking the cap invites: 97 lottery places sit at 40 street addresses holding more than one, suite by suite. The VLT flag itself sits on 159 retail beer licenses and 81 retail liquor licenses; 168 of the city's 438 retail beer licenses share an address with video lottery, as do 82 of 144 retail liquor licenses.
Terminals per place
Every place the city flags for video lottery, by its recorded terminal count. "0" is a flagged place whose count the city recorded as zero or left blank.
| 0 | 7 places |
|---|---|
| 1 | 0 places |
| 2 | 1 place |
| 3 | 2 places |
| 4 | 3 places |
| 5 | 0 places |
| 6 | 5 places |
| 7 | 6 places |
| 8 | 9 places |
| 9 | 8 places |
| 10 | 202 places |
By license type
Active licenses per city type code: how many carry the VLT flag, and how many sit at a lottery place, flagged or not.
| Type | Licenses | Flagged | At a lottery place |
|---|---|---|---|
| RB Retail Beer | 438 | 159 | 168 · 38% |
| RW Retail Wine | 276 | 2 | 61 · 22% |
| RL Retail Liquor | 144 | 81 | 82 · 57% |
| PL Package Liquor | 132 | 0 | 19 · 14% |
| PD Package Delivery | 12 | 0 | 3 · 25% |
| RR Restaurant Liquor | 11 | 0 | 0 · 0% |
| CL Convention Liquor | 1 | 0 | 0 · 0% |
| A-RL Airport Liquor | 1 | 1 | 1 · 100% |
Licenses per place
| Licenses at one address | Places | Of which lottery |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 416 | 164 |
| 2 | 253 | 69 |
| 3 | 19 | 8 |
| 4 or more | 9 | 2 |
Lottery places per street address
The same lottery places, with the suite dropped from the address: how many street addresses hold one, two, or more of them.
| Lottery places at one street address | Addresses |
|---|---|
| 1 | 146 |
| 2 | 28 |
| 3 or more | 12 |
Method
Counted: every active Alcohol license on the city's register, grouped into Licensed places by business address as the Section groups them — 697 places. A place is a lottery place when any of its licenses carries the city's VLT flag; its terminals are the sum of the terminal counts on its licenses. 7 flagged places have a count the city recorded as zero or left blank; they are shown as 0, not estimated, and excluded from the 236 recorded places. Inactive rows are not counted.
The ten-terminal cap is SDCL 42-7A; the register's shape is shown against it, not judged by it. Nothing here names an owner or a business. Places are the city's: one per business address, suite included, so a building of suites is several places and each is capped on its own. The street-address table drops a trailing suite, unit, or "#" number and counts the rest as spelled; two spellings of one street stay two addresses. Type names are the plain readings the Section uses for the city's bare codes.
Sources
- Alcohol Licenses as of October 12, 2026