Ep 287: Alberta, you're on everyone's mind at the Canadian Gaming Summit

iGaming Daily's coverage of the Canadian Gaming Summit continues on the conference room floor from Toronto as SBC Americas Editor, Jessica Welman, is joined by her partner in crime, Charlie Horner, Editor of the Canadian Gaming Business magazine.

The duo talk about Alberta, which seems to be the topic of the conference, and what the Provinces model will look like, in comparison to Ontario, the sports betting advertising bill in the Senate and a glimpse into the latest Canadian Gaming Business magazine.

To read more about the topics mentioned in today's episode, click on the following links:

- https://www.canadiangamingbusiness.com/2024/06/19/igo-report-igaming-year-two/
- https://casinobeats.com/2024/06/20/betmgm-elevates-slots-engagement-with-brian-christopher/

Host: Jessica Welman
Guest: Charlie Horner
Producer: Anaya McDonald
Editor: James Ross

Remember to check out Optimove at https://hubs.la/Q02gLC5L0 or go to Optimove.com/sbc to get your first month free when buying the industry's leading customer-loyalty service. 

Creators & Guests

JW

Host

Jessica Welman

Editor at SBC Americas and Canadian Gaming Business

Guest

Charlie Horner

Senior Journalist @SBC_Americas | Sunderland AFC SC holder | Gretsch and Fender-playing, southpaw guitarist

What is iGaming Daily?

A daily podcast delving into the biggest stories of the day throughout the sports betting and igaming sector.

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Hello and welcome to iGaming Daily Live from the floor of the Canadian Gaming Summit. I'm your host Jessica Wellman, editor of SPC Americas and Canadian Gaming Business, joined by Canadian Gaming Business Magazine editor Charlie Horner. We'll use that title for you today. Yeah, yeah. No, it's great to be here. It's been a long time coming after writing about Canada for so long. Finally being on Canadian soil, it feels good.

All right, before we learn more about how your trip is going, just a quick reminder that iGaming Daily is brought to you by OptiMove. OptiMove, the number one CRM marketing solution for the iGaming market. 56 % of the EGR power. 50, customized player experiences with OptiMove. First free month, link in the description below. At this point, I don't know what else I need to do to convince you all. So we'll hope that we'll convince the last person who hasn't heard about this offer, but.

Okay, Charlie, so you're here. I don't know about you. I was almost, this is the first conference of ours. I was kind of nervous. Yeah, yeah, there's a really good atmosphere in the room, but as we're gonna discuss a little bit later, that there are tensions, there are disagreements that people might be having, and maybe that will play out in the conference rooms, but it's...

It's nice to see. Yeah, it's, I mean, you know, we're we're writers and reporters at the end of the day. We like the drama, but yeah, it's kind of a turf war of sorts. You know, Ontario chose to do this open model and we are probably going to get some sort of news out of Alberta. It certainly seems like it's trending that way as well. But other.

provinces and their provincial lotteries don't think that working with operators that are in their gray market in a regulated way is something that they want to be doing and...

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This is one where I'm like, I don't think that one is necessarily right or wrong, but people have very, very strong opinions about it. Absolutely. And I can see both sides. I can see why the Crown Provincial Corps wouldn't want to give up that power and control that they have in their respective provinces because, well.

who doesn't enjoy a monopoly if you're benefiting from it. But we have seen the roaring successes of Ontario, you know, $2 .4 billion in GGR in the last fiscal year. It's been a really successful market so far, it's probably going to get even bigger and other provinces are looking probably with a little bit of envy. I don't know if it's necessarily envy.

We've seen good numbers out of lots of jurisdictions. I will say...

Tom Nightingale, who has decided to just wear himself out on this first day, wrote up the Deloitte report that another one came out around this time last year as well that looked at like the full economic impact of Ontario in terms of job creation companies brought to the state. Because I think for the lottery, listening to that Crown Court panel that we checked in on to start the day, the argument is like what we're doing goes fully back into the community.

And so do we want to create a situation where some of that money is potentially going elsewhere? And I think the Deloitte report is on the flip side saying well these companies are happy to invest in Ontario as a place of business if you're willing to open it up to them. Absolutely, I mean we're here in Toronto built up with huge incredible office buildings and

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really highly skilled workforce, great labor market, so you can see the benefits for gaming operators to come into this province. There are of course other great cities across Canada and yeah, maybe Edmonton could be the next big hub. Yeah, Alberta, it's all everyone's talking about, right? At least to me, that's all everyone wants to talk about. Yes, it's definitely the topic of the day.

We did get the news a couple of weeks ago that there was movements in the legislative sessions that it isn't just the AGLC that can conduct and manage gaming. Obviously it doesn't mean that the market opens immediately. We've still got a few steps to overcome before then, but it's progress. So I am going to...

Butcher his title. Dale Nalley is like the minister of something something and red tape.

I just love that he's the minister of red tape production. I wish everybody, I wish SPC had a minister of red tape production. It's a good job title. He's the one who kind of makes the decisions, right? So he's having conversations with First Nations, with land -based casinos, with everybody, not just on if they open up the market, but what that model looks like. Because they're not gonna just cut and paste from Ontario exactly how they did it. Ontario has this kind of dual model,

where IGO is the regulator to some extent and then AGCO is its own kind of entity, you know, maybe they don't do that bifurcated thing. Maybe they approach, do a bifurcated approach but in a different way in terms of how things are, to use the very Canadian phrase, conducted and managed. Absolutely. Every jurisdiction has different contexts.

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which would determine how the model looks. Which, you know, I think it's really important that the Minister for Red Tape is coming to conferences like this, having those conversations with all the different stakeholders to see what would work best for his jurisdiction and what would work best in that market, where it's open up. And he's here the whole time, right? And this is a guy, his job's not gaming. His job is all sorts of things. And he's taking all three days of this conference to be here.

He had a meeting with CGA on Tuesday. He will be giving a keynote tomorrow where I think we all kind of expect a big announcement that amounts to, okay, we all saw it coming, but this is us committing. We're going to do it. Yeah. I mean, you can, you can feel that commitment just by the fact that he's here and he's spending a lot of time here and he's going to be a very busy man. I'm sure he's got plenty of other things on his, in his remit, but for him to...

commit those three days to this conference, to have those conversations with the CGA. I think it's really important. Yeah, I mean, I think the other thing, right now we are unfortunately missing this panel. The other thing I'm hearing a lot about is the advertising bill in the Senate.

Have you followed this or do you really know much about it? No, bring us up to date. So this is a bill that would look at limiting at a national level how much sports betting advertising is happening. So again, we've got to write up on Canadian gaming business of the Senate hearing and the stakeholders that were involved a couple of weeks ago. I think some of the friction, you know, Will Hill, who runs is CEO of the Canadian Lottery Coalition, which is the provincial lotteries that would prefer to stay a closed.

model, his argument is we are seeing in, or I say we, I'm not Canadian, Canada is seeing ads at a national level for Ontario operators who are operating in a...

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a legally murky space, the gray market, the unregulated market in most other provinces. And so there is kind of a feeling of a nuisance from that side in these other provinces that these ads are showing up for things that like, you know, the lotto will use the word illegal, but not everybody would what they're doing, those operators are doing in the space.

But we've also seen like a lot of the other people who it's the same as the US, you know, the people who don't want to see these ads are people who are never gambling in the first place and they just wish they were off their televisions. Yeah, absolutely. And there's always going to be that aspect of criticism from from those quarters, because, well, gambling is, while legal in the jurisdictions that it is, it is a controversial.

industry sometimes. People don't like it. We've covered enough legislative meetings to know that, you know, the sort of the religious groups who sort of oppose gambling. But the advertising debate has been raging on in Canada for probably the last two years since the market opened up. It's been really contentious.

Obviously the AGCO updated its standards and guidelines, I believe, at the start of this year, maybe the back end of last year. And that's having an impact in minimizing the number of celebrities and sports stars that are being used in marketing. But it might not be enough for the critics. The debate will...

Continue, I'm sure we'll have more conversations about it and we'll see where it goes in the future. Yeah, well, shame was plug time. So in the issue of Canadian gaming business that you can pick up all over the place on the show floor here, if you're with us in Toronto, it's available online as well. I spoke with Catherine McLeod at ThinkTV, which works with the Canadian broadcasters to kind of vet and look at the ads that they're doing to kind of get some context of.

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how many sports betting ads are we really seeing compared to other things and she took me through that process. I gotta say though, don't read mine second, read the op -ed from Paul Burns first because he gives just, this guy's been asked nonstop about ads for six months and I think he's exhausted by it. So his piece in your magazine is a really like thorough argument against the ad.

push to just get them off the air. Yeah it's a fascinating read, it's an impassioned defense of the industry as you would expect from Paul. It's definitely worth a read with all these conversations going on so if you haven't picked up a copy of the magazine please do. It's available across the floor and obviously online as well. Anything else in this issue?

envy your job because you have to try to think about something that's going to be relevant, you know, two to three months down the line from when we turn it into you. So any other pieces really stand out to you as ones that you think people should check out? Yeah, well, we, you know, when we put together the magazine, it's important that we cover the industry as a whole from all over the country.

So one piece we did was with BCLC's new Chief Social Purpose Officer, Natasha Questel. And it was really interesting to get an insight into how BCLC is serving communities, doing good causes initiatives, and just getting to know Natasha a little bit more because she was very new into the role when...

when we did the interview, so it was nice to get a bit of a profile into the people who were making big decisions in the industry. You know, we've still got, we're midway through day one. I just left Brian Christopher's keynote, which we have a video interview with him that will be coming in the coming weeks. Lots of, like, so much news breaking around the conference, so this morning...

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But MGM announced Brian Christopher is gonna be one of their ambassadors and timed that announcement with CGS, the Deloitte report timed with CGS. They really love a news dump at this conference, right? It's great. You can feel the excitement on the floor and it's gonna be included in people's conversations when they meet throughout the week. Anything else coming up for the rest of the conference that you're excited to see? I think the main one is...

Dale Nally tomorrow, I think the room's gonna be absolutely jam -packed. Well, all of the room has been jam -packed. I keep joking like it's a fire hazard to Aidan, our conference producer. I'm like, you better hope nothing happens. Like, there's so many people cramming. The Canadian, I just told Lou Marignot, I was like, they're like good students. They just wanna attend everything and make sure they're in the know. Yeah, stay educated, guys. Yeah. Other conferences, step up.

and make sure you guys come and attend all of our good conference content. Yeah, Deal and Allie's gonna be a good one. I'm curious to hear what this sports betting panel has to say. Tom's in there right now while we're filming this. I have my panel later today, which is, I mean, it's not necessarily Canadian specific. It's a lot of different people talking about how you kind of compete for the online casino player's attention. And it'll be kind of like five different case studies of how we do that.

I always say I need to beef up my eye casino stuff. I think that's always, any writer in this industry, I think that's the side that you're less involved with usually. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, we love sports. You do love your sports. I love my sports. Don't get me wrong, but yeah, it's one that's a little tougher. And then other than that, I think I'm just learning and running through what else is.

and taking advantage of the conference content while I can. How about you, any other big plans? Yeah, just having conversations, going to the conference and sort of taking in the content, learning. Yeah, just made the most of being here. Yeah, I think it's gonna be a good one. I'm looking forward to meeting everyone. The Player Protection Symposium yesterday was obviously a good one. We spoke with Martin Lichka. AGCO is interesting, you know.

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There, I didn't really bring it up with Martin because I doubt as an operator he would want to. I really think it's interesting what this group is doing in terms of cracking down on like VIP related RG violations. I can't think of another, I know in the US we don't have a regulatory body that has really had this. Can you think of anybody that has? No, no, not off the top of my head, but it was a really interesting.

panel that we both listened to yesterday on the topic of VIP and protecting VIP. It's kind of the elephant in the room that no one's discussing. You know, on SBC America's, we have an update. Sam Antar is the guy who's trying to sue Bet MGM, claiming that they kept forcing him back into the site, even though he was clearly and obviously a problem gambler. Got tossed out of district court. He is now taking it to the Court of Appeals.

Context this man is currently in prison for financial crimes of his own so, you know not necessarily the cut dry thing, but I'm GM gonna be in front of the Michigan State Supreme Court for a case where a woman Claims that she had like three million deposited in her in a jackpot in what I think Reading between the lines seems to have been a very obvious glitch right

So it's tough though on the topic of VIPs because well by definition those are the players that you want and those are the high rollers who you might say have the higher or more access to funds but there's a line between you know making sure that those VIPs have a good experience playing and enjoy playing.

but then protecting them and making sure they don't fall into the realms of problem gambling. Yeah, you know, the moderator, Jay Robinson, they made a really good point, which is it's not something where it's just like dollars spent because they have a lot more disposable income than most people. But we have technology now and with online gaming in particular, you can look at deposit patterns. Did they suddenly deposit a ton more?

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than they normally deposit. Look at their bet history. Did they just lose 10 in a row before they made a bet that's six times their normal bet size? There are other markers of harm that you can kind of look to than purely money lost. So it's interesting to see where we might go with that. I think operators are always just going to be a little mum when it comes to VIP though. Understandably so. You don't want to give away your secrets.

Which is why Mike Hermelin is the name we talk about every other week on this podcast. Yeah, I was just about to say, you know, it's high stakes game as that case clearly demonstrates. Well, did you see, so New Jersey for like the past two months, points bet's been number two and then suddenly fell off some huge amount back to single digits with the switch to fanatics. And the rumor is that there is one VIP player that was wooed back.

to DraftKings and that's why DraftKings is back in second place. wow. So that's how much of a swing one good VIP player can be for an operator that now I understand more why this hermillin thing has become what it's become.

Alright, well it wouldn't be a podcast episode without a Mike Hervelyn mention even though we are in Canada. So glad that we got that out of the way. In the meantime, I'm going to go ahead and wrap this up so I can catch the tail end of this sports betting advertising panel. Charlie, enjoy the rest of your conference. You guys, if you're here, enjoy the rest of the conference. Come by the booth, grab a magazine. To the rest of you, tune in tomorrow for another episode live from the floor of Canadian Gaming Summit.