Fans of football and finance, rejoice! The Canadian Football League kicked off over the weekend, reminding me of a headline from a few years back about a life-changing 50/50 raffle prize at a CFL game in 2014. In Edmonton, a jackpot of $123,000 from a previous game’s 50/50 raffle rolled over to the next game after the winning ticket went unclaimed, leading to massive public interest that pushed the sum to $644,000 (half of which goes to the winner).

Whether it’s a half milly or a just a few hundred bucks, what’s not to love about a good ole 50/50 raffle at a local sporting event? For those inclined toward charitable causes but still giddy over the potential to make a quick buck, 50/50 raffles are the only game in town.

How do 50/50 raffles work?

Unfortunately, no, a 50/50 raffle doesn’t mean you have a 50% chance of winning. What it means is that half of the money goes toward a local cause—oftentimes a team’s own charity foundation—while the other half is essentially a one-night lottery for anyone in attendance. Of that $644,000 jackpot in 2014, roughly $322,000 went to the winner, while the other half went to local charities in Alberta. Donating and gambling at the same time? Talk about a win-win!

And yes, that $322,000 winning ticket was indeed claimed. By a 20-year-old, no less. For context, that sum of money is more than three times the average salary of a player in the actual CFL. Because of the hype surrounding this particular 50/50 raffle, tickets for the game between Calgary and Edmonton were in equally high demand. Similar to a group of coworkers splitting Powerball tickets for a big jackpot, those in attendance pooled their funds together with friends to buy more raffle tickets and allow friends to participate from outside the stadium walls. And they could have sold more. Many degenerate and/or benevolent football fans were stuck in line when raffle ticket sales were cut off, leading to an excellent quote from Edmonton’s CEO:

“We think we could have reached a prize of $500,000, but we’re a football team, not a lottery team,” Rhodes said.

These days, you are able to purchase tickets to 50/50 raffles online in addition to those entering the raffle at the game. This means that despite not attending the event in question, you can participate in these traditionally in-person only fundraisers. While it makes for some even more jaw-dropping prize numbers—and again, it’s for charity so the more the merrier—the purist in me hates this newfangled approach.

A 100% chance of making someone’s day  

A typical 50/50 raffle at a pro sports game winds up in the $5,000 to $40,000 range, depending on the attendance. One of the reasons I love plunking down 20 bucks to the 50/50 raffle at a baseball game is because I can look around the stadium and know that somebody in the ballpark will be walking out of there with a few thousand bucks and a smile. At worst, I just donated $10 to a presumably legitimate charity and conspired with other strangers to combine our remaining money in an effort to make some lucky fan’s day.  

The in-person element to the raffle makes for a more intimate experience, with better odds at actually winning. Unless stones are involved, in-person lotteries are the way to go. So, while the prize money (and, of course, donation) increases with the online entry component, it goes without saying that your already minimal odds of winning decrease. At that point, you might as well just play the lottery.

The tax implications of 50/50 raffles

Although half of the money you put up for your ticket is donated, here in America the IRS doesn’t quite see it that way. For tax purposes, 50/50 raffles count the same as playing the lottery, so you can flush that tax break down the drain. The only real tax implication would be one you’re thrilled to deal with in the form of short-term capital gains on the amount you win.

Winning a 50/50 raffle is no different from winning big at a casino in the eyes of Uncle Sam. So in reality, a 50/50 raffle is really more like 50/30/20: 50% to a local cause, 30% to the winner, and 20% to the US of A. In Canada, though, you don’t pay taxes on your 50/50 winnings. Our neighbors to the north seem to have a knack for making common sense a little more common.

Will you be the next 50/50 raffle winner?

While that particular CFL game sticks with me, that large sum has been eclipsed by some even gaudier headline-grabbing totals in recent history. In a different sport in the same Canadian town, Edmonton’s NHL team utilized the online raffle in COVID times to raise more than $5 million Canadian dollars ($2.5 mil to the winner). The 50/50 raffles seem to be gaining steam in America as well, despite the eventual tax bill. The Los Angeles Rams recently announced that they broke the NFL’s single-game record with a $342,975 total jackpot, split between the lucky winner and a scholarship fund. But records are meant to be broken. Who knows, maybe you will be the next 50/50 raffle winner. But you have to play to win.

The ability to watch football in June is a welcome distraction from the current state of financial affairs, even if it’s not quite fantasy football season. And hey, in this market environment, 50/50 raffles are as good a wager as any. So what are the chances that you’ll play the raffle the next time you attend a major sporting event? I’d set my own personal odds at much higher than 50/50.