Alberta Paves the Way for IGaming

In all fairness, Alberta already has iGaming, well, it has a government-owned site that allows people to bet online. And since it opened in 2020, it has managed to sign up over 300,000 Albertans. But that is only slightly more than 10% of the population. The site, as with many state monopolies, has not been well loved by many in the Province and currently has a TrustPilot score of 1.6

And while the online casino run by Sporting Solution out of Edmonton has managed to bring in more than 235 million Canadian in the 2023-2024 fiscal year, some studies indicate that more than 55% of the population prefers to play with offshore grey market casinos rather than with Play Alberta. 

The Canadian Province of Ontario took a much more free market, hands-off approach to iGaming when it legalized online casinos in 2022. In fact, there are 49 separate licensed casino operators to choose from in the province. Consequently, Ontario had a revenue of 280 million Canadian dollars in just February, although it has a population of more than 16 million compared to only about five million residents in Alberta. 

Still, it has been widely believed that the underwhelming response to Play Alberta and the widely disparate revenue flooding in Ontario probably indicates that a large amount of tax money is being left on the table with the current government-owned casino. 

Alberta Bill 48 hopes to change all that by setting up a Crown Corporation. This corporation would lay out the rules for a free market expansion of iGaming in the province and also set up safeguards for responsible gaming regulation to help protect those with gaming problems and limit the potential for negative impacts.

Introduced this week by Minister Dale Nally, the potential law could be a game-changer for iGaming in Alberta. However, it currently lacks many details on the tax structure, licensing fees, and even if the number of licenses will be limited.

Looking to Ontario For Answers

While Ontario's revenue and subsequent taxes have been eye-popping, so have some of the studies on problem gaming in the Province. A survey by Statistics Canada pegged problem gamblers at about 1.1 % of the population seven years ago, but some studies out in late 2024 and early 2025 seem to suggest that the number is now somewhere between 9% and 11%.

Gambling ads also litter the airwaves in Ontario, and surveys from Ipsos indicate that about two-thirds of residents would like to see them limited. And this is only two years into their grand free market experiment. 

Another point of contention has been the legal gambling age, currently set at 19. While still preliminary, many studies seem to indicate that the quickest growing problem gambling demographic is young men, especially 18 to 24 year olds. Does raising the gambling age significantly reduce gambling harm with this age group, or just drive it to underground illegal black markets or offshore grey markets? No one is quite sure yet.

In any case, Alberta has long believed that it could build a better iGaming experience than its current one. That it could take the best from the Ontario model while keeping many more guardrails and safeguards in place for the vulnerable. Bill 48 crystallizes that conversation, and everyone waits to see the final proposal.