Since its founding, it has generated $4.6 billion for property tax relief for state residents.
Five contestants would play the game, consisting of four or five rounds where they would choose cash prizes hidden behind the letters Wisconsin Lottery Moneygame, which were set up in the style of the Wheel of Fortune gameboard, but with reversed play.
The winner of the main game went to the bonus round, where they spun a wheel which had alternating values of $25,000 and $50,000.
Hosts were Mark Johnson and Parker Drew; the show's hostesses were Mary Christine and Lori Minetti.
The show's format was changed to a new version known as the Super Money Game in mid-2002, involving more contests with a smaller contestant pool, equivalent to a lower-cost version of the Hoosier Lottery's Hoosier Millionaire.
Several Wisconsin stations picked up the audio portion of the television drawings, though most stations read the winning numbers from Associated Press releases from the Lottery on the mornings after the drawings, which also are published online, in newspapers throughout Wisconsin, USA Today, and the border areas of outlying states.
Later, the Lottery began its Wisconsin's Very Own Megabucks jackpot drawings after the launch of Powerball (which replaced L*A) in 1992.
Other games were added by the Lottery, but were not always successful, such as MUSL's Daily Millions, which was infamous for having few winners of the $1 million cash prize, and having a complicated drawing procedure involving three number pools and various colored balls.
The Badger 5 game continues to this day; its play style is found in most U.S. lotteries.
The televised drawings and the Money Game were discontinued in late 2002, due to budget constraints and stations moving the show to lower-rated timeslots.
The drawings were moved to Madison, where they are conducted around 9:30pm nightly at the Lottery's headquarters building using an air-gapped random number generator machine instead.
The stations which were part of the Lottery network continue to receive first priority to release the nightly numbers.
On June 14, 2020, the Lottery began to draw Pick 3, Pick 4, and All or Nothing twice daily from Madison; the drawings occur at 1:30 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. CT daily, and are uploaded to the Lottery's YouTube channel shortly after the numbers are generated.
Before the Wisconsin Lottery began in 1988, some players who did not want to drive to Illinois tried their luck at stores on the reservation.
The Oneida Nation also offered a televised bingo game program on Green Bay stations in the mid-to-late 1980s, which was in the form of a caller reading the numbers on the bottom of the screen, with the lighted number board on the top portion.