Last week in an interview with CDC Gaming Reports, the Hon. Dale Nally, Minister of Service and Red Tape Reduction for the Province of Alberta, said that while he couldn’t commit to a specific launch date on when a new, open, regulated, igaming market in Alberta would go live, “I can tell you that I think people are going to be surprised by how fast we get this done…and roll this out.”
People in the industry across Canada and elsewhere no doubt took note, and there will soon be discussion on which province will then follow Ontario and Alberta into a regulated, competitive commercial market.
“The enthusiasm and interest there have been fantastic,” Paul Burns, President and CEO of the Canadian Gaming Association, told CDC Gaming Reports on August 2. “The minister has obviously met with industry stakeholders quite a bit, spending time with AGCO and iGaming Ontario. We’re a resource as well. They’ve gleaned a lot from the Ontario experience. That’s helping them with the speed. He’s made it a priority.”
The question now is how the market will look. What will the tax rate be (Ontario’s is 20 percent)? What will be the impact on First Nations in Alberta? How will sports-betting advertising be handled? What’s the market potential and their plan to deal with the gray market?
The Alberta and Ontario gaming markets aren’t identical, Nally said. “We have a younger population. That’s because of our energy industry, which tends to attract younger people to the province. We also have higher incomes and a low cost of living with low taxes. All of that means that we have higher disposable incomes in Alberta than we do in the rest of the provinces. And it’s a demographic that loves their sports.”
Burns sees that as well. “It will look a lot like Ontario on some level. We’ve encouraged them to look at Ontario in terms of regulatory standards. That makes it easier for companies to evaluate the marketplace. It doesn’t mean everyone is going to go. The market may not be for everybody, given its size. But you want people to be interested. It’s a good gaming market, we know that.”
Burns, like many other industry players, was front and center at the Canadian Gaming Summit in Toronto in June when Nally gave a speech and officially dropped the checkered flag on his province’s commitment to a new open market.
How Alberta will roll out retail sportsbooks is another question. To say that the rollout was slow in Ontario would be an understatement. The Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation announced in October 2022 that casinos would be launching retail sportsbooks. OLG owns the 29 casinos in the province and contracts out the management to third-party operators.
Caesars opened a retail sportsbook at the Windsor casino in January 2023. the first full-service brick-and-mortar sportsbook. Six other Ontario casinos have sports-betting kiosks. Great Canadian Entertainment has sportsbook lounges at a few of their casinos. Land-based casinos in Ontario have long been waiting to launch such a product that competes with casinos in the U.S.
There are 29 land-based gaming casinos in Alberta, all licensed.
“There isn’t a lot of retail sports betting going on,” Burns said. “The casino sportsbook product has been slow. The casino sector has been interested. I suspect it can (happen faster in Alberta).
“The minister realizes you don’t want to put artificial barriers in place … prevent casino operators from forming partnerships with branded sportsbooks. Mohegan has a great partnership with FanDuel in Connecticut. OLG prevented that, for reasons I don’t understand. Why wouldn’t you give your partners all the tools they can to compete? Sports betting is a low-margin business, a volume business. For casinos, it’s an important amenity for driving people into the building. When people gamble on table games and slot machines, that’s where they make their money. So they’re making money off those visitations, not the sportsbook itself. I think Minister Nally understands that. He’s trying to figure out a regime where everyone can benefit. That’s encouraging.”
