Alberta will soon expand its online gambling landscape to allow multiple players to operate legally, moving closer to a model used in Ontario.
At present, the only regulated and legal online gambling website in the province is Play Alberta. It includes casino-style games, live dealer table games as well as sports betting, and is operated by Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis (AGLC).
But in May, the provincial government passed Bill 16, the Red Tape Reduction Statutes Amendment Act. It allows for the provincial government to regulate and oversee iGaming activities, meaning it could green-light online gambling websites operated by private companies.
Since then, the province has been holding consultations regarding what its strategy could look like. It has just wrapped up an initial phase of those consultations.
There’s no date yet for when Alberta will open its market. But it’s just a matter of time, and will move ahead once a decision has been made around its eventual setup, said Service Alberta and Red Tape Reduction Minister Dale Nally.
“I don’t have a date yet, only because I haven’t taken anything in front of my cabinet colleagues,” Nally told CBC News.
“Here’s what I’ll tell you. If there’s a safer way to do this, and if there’s a more responsible way to do it, and in a manner that allows us to capture a few dollars in the process, we’re going to do this quickly.”
An eye toward the ‘grey market’
Play Alberta may be the only regulated online gambling website in Alberta, but that doesn’t mean players are sticking to the AGLC-run option. Players are able to place bets with offshore gambling websites such as Bet365 and Bodog in the so-called “grey market.”
With an eye on bringing grey market bets back within provincial boundaries, Ontario became the first province in Canada to move ahead with a regulated sports betting program in 2022, allowing multiple operators to provide gambling services.
After the first year of that arrangement, the province brought in total gaming revenues of $1.48 billion, according to a 2023 report from Ontario iGaming. As of March 31 of this year, there were 47 operators in Ontario offering 77 gambling websites, according to Ontario iGaming.
The challenge with the system as it exists today in Alberta, in Nally’s view, is that AGLC captures around half of the market share.
“The goal here is to get rid of the illicit market … the best way to get rid of an illicit gambling market is to have a healthy, regulated market for both operators and players to come to,” Nally said.
He added that gambling “inherently will never be safe.”
“But the question is, is there a safer way to do it? Is there a more responsible way?”
The eventual arrangement won’t mirror Play Alberta’s relationship with the AGLC. Operators had told the province they wouldn’t come to Alberta under former rules given the AGLC’s relationship with Play Alberta, according to Nally.
“They don’t want to give their player information to a competitor, in this case, which would be Play Alberta or AGLC,” he said.
“We heard loud and clear that it was important that we had responsibility to conduct and manage gaming within government.”
A report commissioned by the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario and released in April stated that the Ontario government estimated 70 per cent of online gaming was taking place on unregulated sites prior to the launch of its regulated market.
According to the same report, around 86 per cent of respondents said they were now using regulated sites at the time of a survey conducted earlier this year.
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David Hodgins, a professor of clinical psychology at the University of Calgary and research director with the Alberta Gaming Research Institute, said the central issue with such a move is the potential harm stemming from more people gambling.
“It’s really the safeguards that I’m most concerned about, whether we need to have that many operators in the market,” he said. “From a social policy and public health perspective, there’s lots to be concerned about.”
Self-exclusion, individual limits
Hodgins said close regulation will be critical to mitigate harms associated with online gambling.
“[Gambling] can really lead to an addiction … for some individuals, they develop an impairment of control over their involvement, and they’re unable to stop or reduce their gambling, despite the fact that it’s clear that it’s causing negative consequences,” he said.
One of those safeguards available on gambling websites is the option of self-exclusion, which allows players to easily ban themselves from gambling websites. The best version of this concept is one that applies to all sites at the same time, according to Hodgins.
“You could ban yourself from VLT machines, from casinos, from all of the online sites, regardless who the operator is,” he said.
At present, Ontario residents can ban themselves from individual casinos, but there’s no provincewide co-ordination across websites, though that will soon change.
While no details have been finalized for Alberta, Nally said he was “very interested” in self-exclusion tools that would be provincewide.
“I think that is the right direction to go,” he said.
Hodgins also noted online casinos will often have a tool that allows players to set a limit on how much they’re willing to lose in a given time period, whether that’s per day, week, month or year.
Until now, the onus to impose those limits has been on the individual who gambles. But Hodgins said he’d like to see mandatory limit setting.
Nally said all options were being studied.
“We do know that there are best practices when it comes to safety and responsibility, and one of them is monitoring bets,” he said.
Nally said certain operators will reach out to players if their betting habits have changed — for instance, if an individual used to bet $5 on a hockey game, then ups their wager to $100.
“They will reach out to that player,” he said. “Those are the type of behaviours that we want in our market.”
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Nigel Turner, a scientist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Ontario, has been tracking calls to the Ontario problem gambling hotline since 2020.
He said there was a sharp increase in the number of calls to the helpline in April 2022, when Ontario launched its regulated sports betting program.
“The primary thing [Alberta can learn from Ontario] is to have a system of self-exclusion in place, and minimize the amount of advertising,” Turner said.
Revenue splits still to be determined
Though details are still being ironed out, Nally said revenues under the new model will be folded into general revenues, similar to how the system currently operates.
It hasn’t yet been determined what the revenue splits with operators will be.
In Ontario, the province takes 20 per cent of revenues from regulated gambling websites. That translated into an estimated $790 million last year, including taxes.
Determining that split in Alberta will be a big decision, according to Nally.
“You want to get that number right. Right now, the operators, they don’t have to split it … and they’re getting 100 per cent of the proceeds,” Nally said.
“You need a tax rate that is going to be attractive to them, because if you go too high, then the operators will just decide, we’re not going to join your market.”
In 2023, surveys showed that 72 per cent of Albertans aged 18 years and over gambled on at least one activity, up from 70 per cent in 2022, according to the AGLC.