With the opening of a regulated online gaming market in Alberta coming up, possibly as soon as early 2025, Segev LLP has announced the opening of an office in Calgary, in anticipation of helping clients access opportunities in the new frontier.
The Calgary office joins Segev LLP offices in Toronto and Vancouver. Segev employs lawyers with gaming and betting expertise, covering such areas as company formation and structuring, regulatory compliance, public-markets and private-equity finance, mergers and acquisition, advertising, and affiliate-marketing law.
CDC Gaming caught up with Founding Partner Ron Segev to discuss the move.
CDC: Why are you moving operations to Calgary? What can you share about the specifics of the operation?
“We can serve the Alberta office from other offices, of course, but [the Alberta-based lawyer they are in the process of hiring] will take the lead there, certainly for the igaming initiatives. The strategy for the Alberta office is twofold: igaming and more broadly, our clients are looking at raising funds and doing financing through Alberta entities. For various reasons, it’s faster. There’s less friction.
“We like to go where our clients go. And our clients have been increasingly putting pressure on us, saying, ‘Can you support us in Alberta?’ It’s the fastest growing economy in Canada now and it’s seeing the largest influx in terms of interprovincial immigration. I think the story of it being a petrol state – that’s old news. The economy has diversified.
“Last year, we did four transactions that involved land-based casinos and horse-racing facilities in Alberta and we have a lot of experience working alongside the AGLC [Alcohol Gaming, Lottery and Cannabis], so all of that just made perfect sense for us.
“And then, of course, with the Alberta market expected to open for igaming, our clients expect us to be there, so we’re going to be there.
“We did a pretty good job of assisting clients to navigate through the Ontario market as it opened. It was all green pasture. No one really knew what to expect. We put a dedicated team on it and we’re replicating the process that we used in Ontario for Alberta. We’ve already sent out a call-to-action email to our entire client list, basically saying if you want to get ready for Alberta, you can get ready now. And that’s really the first step, just to make sure that they’re mindful of the sort of disclosure requirements and the expected compliance requirements under the AGLC’s framework.”
CDC: How will the market compare to Ontario?
“A lot of people are saying that it’s going to be very similar to the iGaming Ontario model. We believe that, but what we know with certainty is what exists today, which is the current AGLC framework. In terms of background checks, disclosure, the investigation process, we suspect a lot of that is going to be the same. So we’re urging our clients to get in touch with us, so we can get them ready.
“If it’s the same as iGaming Ontario, then it’s going to be a first-come first-served process. If you’re first in the door and there are no issues with your paperwork, then ostensibly, you’ll be first to go live.”
CDC: Are you getting a sense of how fast the market will roll out?
“Our intel is that the AGCO is going to be supporting the back office of AGLC in this new endeavor. And if that’s the case, then a fast rollout, I think, is to be expected. The AGLC has the resources to roll out quickly. The government is aggressive. They want to see success yesterday. They don’t want to have to wait for the bureaucrat machine to spin up. The interest will definitely be there. By some estimates, it’s considered the eighth largest market in North America. People will say … [Alberta] is a third of the population size of Ontario, so we can’t expect that much. But at the same time, if you look at the average Albertan’s gaming and betting habits compared to Ontarians’, they tend to bet more per capita than people in Ontario. They like to gamble. They love sports.”
CDC: There’s more disposable income in Alberta, with a younger population. Do you agree?
“I think there are two markets in Ontario. Look at the Toronto market, at the disposable income there, as affected by cost of living. Same thing with all of British Columbia. Forget Vancouver; it’s just a fortune to live out here. There’s not that much disposable income, whereas in in Calgary, in Alberta, the cost of living is lower.”
CDC: What did you learn from the Ontario market, lessons that you will be able to apply to Alberta, from a legal perspective?
“What helped us achieve success in Ontario was the relationships we built with the regulator. When a client had a question for us — very often in those early days, you didn’t have the answers, because they didn’t exist — you pick up the phone or send an email. It’s important to build a relationship, a good rapport, a relationship of trust, where the regulator understands that you’re doing your best to guide the client to meet the standards of excellence that the regulator expects, and compliance standards, and so forth. I think we built that relationship of trust. We’re going to try to replicate that with AGLC.
“The other thing was that we had a decent command through our Ontario lawyers of the smaller stakeholders in the market — the marketing companies, the technology companies. That’s going to be important for us too, because oftentimes clients, certainly the ones from Europe, who are looking to set a local presence, or get a country manager or place, or let’s say, a market manager in place, they’re looking to us for introductions. If we can point them in the right direction, that’s a real value add.
“A basic example of that was the insurance-policy requirement that the AGCO levied on the operators. Insurance was a serious point of friction for operators. They just couldn’t find a policy that was cost effective. We hustled and we found three different providers, and we said, ‘Here’s a choice.’ That seemed to unblock things. Things like that, we can do.”
