New data released by GeoComply shines a different-colored spotlight on the growth of the regulated Ontario igaming market, specifically shedding light on the size and scope of attempts to access the Ontario market from outside provincial borders.
“Consumers want to protections. They want to play on regulated legitimate sites if given the opportunity,” said Lindsay Slader, SVP Compliance, GeoComply.
GeoComply, based in Vancouver with offices in Montreal and a newly opened office in downtown Toronto, works with igaming operators to provide fraud prevention and cybersecurity that detect location fraud and help verify a user’s true digital identity. Bet99 was the latest licensed igaming operator in Ontario to announce a partnership with GeoComply. The company’s geolocation systems are installed on over 400 million devices and analyze over one billion transactions every month.
“We’re a Canadian-born-and-bred company. We want as many opportunities as possible to offer our tech, not only to enable regulated gaming, but also to assist companies in identifying fraud,” she said. “So for us, that’s what opportunity looks like — regulated gaming across Canada.”
That means working with licensed operators to block attempts from outside players to access the regulated market. Among the highlights, according to the “GeoComply Overview of Ontario Market Data”: NFL Sundays fuel the Ontario market, with a 57 percent increase in geolocations volumes on NFL Sundays through mid-November; 105,000 attempts from Quebec have been blocked since the start of the NFL season; there’s been a 90 percent increase in new-player accounts in September and October (the start of NFL season, 250,000 new player accounts); in the past 30 days, GeoComply processed over 15.9 million checks within 10 kilometers of the Ontario border with a 99.8 percent pass rate.
Players outside the province looking to access the Ontario market will spoof an IP address, use spoofing software, or find a proxy within Ontario to place wagers.
From Sept. 7 to Nov. 15, there were 750,000 out of-province attempts blocked via IP spoofing, 78,000 out-of-province attempts blocked via spoofing software for the same dates, and 2,300 out-of-province suspected proxy betting attempts.
And there were 1,900 access attempts from sanctioned regions since the kickoff of NFL season – 33.5 percent from Ukraine, 28.6 percent from Cuba, 11 percent from China.
Also, Raptors fan engagement outpaces the Maple Leafs by 73 percent (Leaf home game Nov. 11 and 12, 1,041 average geolocation checks; Raptors home games Nov. 13 and 15, 1,796 average geolocation checks).
