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Alberta’s government has taken the first formal step toward opening up the province’s online gambling market by introducing legislation to establish a new agency to manage the program.
The iGaming Alberta Act was introduced in the provincial parliament on Wednesday (March 26), confirming recent reports that the Albertan government had finally developed a clear plan to follow Ontario in establishing a competitive market.
The 44-page bill will create the Alberta iGaming Corporation to contract with private operators to offer online casino games and sports betting to the province’s residents on its behalf.
The bill includes a number of corresponding technical changes to the province’s gambling laws, with Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis (AGLC) due to enforce more specific requirements and regulatory restrictions after the legislation is approved.
Announcing the new bill, Alberta gambling minister Dale Nally said the new agency is necessary as Ontario had already demonstrated it would not be “best practice” for AGLC to both regulate and contract with private operators while it separately operates the province’s PlayAlberta online casino platform.
Nally confirmed that implementing regulations would be adopted only after consultation with industry stakeholders.
He declined to put a target date on when a competitive regulated market would go live, other than to say it would “certainly be later on this year, if not early next year”.
Nally also acknowledged that his formal title of minister of red tape reduction generally means his mandate is to remove regulatory burdens for businesses in Alberta.
“Let’s be clear, red tape is by definition regulatory requirements that are unnecessary or redundant; with iGaming … if we’re going to open a private marketplace, we need regulatory oversight to make sure all those operators are acting responsible and Albertans are protected,” Nally said.
The minister said that unregulated sites currently available in Alberta “pose higher risks in terms of providing weaker consumer protections and are not necessarily upholding social responsibility, especially for vulnerable groups and those experiencing gambling related harms”.
“That’s why we’re requiring iGaming operators to register to be able to operate in Alberta and to follow important regulations, which will be set out in policy standards and regulation later this year. That’s not red tape; that’s responsible regulation.”
The minister told reporters that it would be premature to say whether Alberta would copy Ontario’s standards on advertising and marketing that include a prohibition on athletes or other prominent celebrities in ads.
However, one policy decision that has been made is that Alberta will ensure a central mechanism is operational on day one to enable players to exclude themselves from regulated iGaming sites, as well as wider forms of gambling in the province.
Ontario’s 50 regulated operators are required to offer self-exclusion to players, but a central system that applies across all operators is still being implemented some three years after the market’s launch.
The launch of a de facto licensing regime for online gaming in Alberta has been eagerly anticipated as it is set to become the first Canadian province to follow in the footsteps of Ontario, now one of the largest regulated markets globally.
Nally said the government-run PlayAlberta platform generated approximately C$235m ($165m) in revenue last year, but that accounts for an estimated 45 percent of total online gambling activity in the province.
A competitive market for online casino games and sports betting in Alberta would be expected to generate C$723m in its first year, rising to C$1.3bn (US$938m) by year three, according to Vixio GamblingCompliance’s Canada Online Forecasting Dashboard.
