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A daily podcast delving into the biggest stories of the day throughout the sports betting and igaming sector.
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It is just such a fascinating time for gambling, not only in Canada, but North America wide and I think worldwide really as well. A lot of European people in the Canadian market. yeah, it's going to be a really, really interesting week. New name, same old show. The Canadian gaming event. SBC Summit Canada is, in our humble opinion, perhaps perfectly timed, given that the nation will be headlining industry news this summer. With a brand spanking new market going live, and the small matter of the World Cup coming to town, Canada will be a hub of sports betting and iGaming activity. Welcome back to iGaming Daily, supported by Optimu, the creator of positionalist marketing, and the number one player engagement solution for sports betting and iGaming operators. I'm Charlie Horner and today I'm joined by the editor of Canadian gaming business Tom Nightingale and today we're going to just have a bit of a preview of the SBC Summit Canada and have a bit of a chinwag about what's making things turn in Canada. So Tom, how's things? Yeah, very well, thank you. Always look forward to another SBC Summit Canada. You know, it's nice to, there's, there's no shortage of things to talk about any year, but I think it's fair to say that this year, um, there is perhaps more than usual to talk about. So looking forward to getting out there, uh, feet on the ground, so to speak out of my home office for a week, uh, and get chatting and, know, find out what's, what's making people tick and dig behind the curtain a little bit more. Yeah. It's always nice to have those sort of national and regional events and, and just really get to talk to the people that you. talk to on emails and Zoom calls and things like that, so it'd be nice to get the industry in Canada back together. When I last went in 2024, Tom, the big story at the time was, when will Alberta go live? Well, it's taken a while, but we have a date. We know it's going to go live. We know what the market's going to look like. So I guess let's start off with... the launch of Alberta's iGaming market. What do we know about it? And is there any sort of content around the event that you would particularly like to highlight? Yeah, I mean, it's like you say, it's been a topic of conversation for a few years now, hasn't it really? But we finally got there, like you say, a date's been set, the RSVPs have been sent out, everyone knows the dress code and the running order for the big day, July 13th it's launching. Um, so yeah, obviously, you know, that's going to be a pretty predominant topic conversation this year's event. We've got, um, Albert and Minister Dale Nally back again, uh, this time for a fireside chat that I think I'm gonna, I'm gonna have a sit down with him and run through, you know, what that ramp up periods look like for them, where things stand. But I mean, it's a, you know, it's an incredibly exciting time really. I think at the last count, we know 30 something operators, I think of applied to enter. think obviously a lot of these operators who've been live in Ontario for several years now, opportunities to launch, know, to expand geographically in Canada obviously don't come around very often. that's obviously going to be a key topic conversation as well as the, we'll chat with the minister. There's also a couple of specific panels. We've got operators and suppliers on talking about, you know, like how the regulations have been set up in Alberta. It's pretty similar to Ontario. terms of tax rate and open licensing, so no cap on how many licenses can be issued. A lot of the basics, as we know, are pretty similar to Ontario, but Alberta does have some nuances in its approach as well. Obviously, being a Western province, socioeconomic makeup, I guess, of Alberta is pretty different to Ontario. So it'll be really interesting, I think, to hear. Obviously I cover it on a daily basis, but it'll be really interesting to hear what operators, suppliers, the minister, know, all these stakeholders, you know, how they're looking at the market, where they stand and what they see the potential, I guess, being it's always quite difficult to assess. um Just how quickly, like when a new market opens up, just how quickly it's going to hit the ground running and you know, how quickly it's going to get up to speed. Ontario, I feel like kind of went from nought to 60 and has just kept growing for four years now. um So it'll be really interesting to see, you know, what people are thinking, where people's heads are at. So obviously Alberta will be even outside of the specific panels. You can guarantee that's going to be a huge, you know, you're going to hear the word Alberta whispered, shouted, you know, regularly throughout the week. Don't have any Alberta related drinking games, please. Yeah, that might get very irresponsible very quickly. But Tom, look, we've, we, said that there's some similarities and some differences between Alberta and Ontario, but perhaps our non-North American listeners might not be too aware of some of those intricacies, some of the specific regulations that we're looking at. Do you mind just giving a bit of an overview of what the Alberta market will look like when it opens on July 13th? Yeah, so mean, if I had to predict right now, I would say we are going to see easily Oh, I don't know, two dozen operators going live pretty much on day one. I mean, we've already had confirmation. I think off the top of my head, I could list, I think about 15 operators who have confirmed they have applied. Generally speaking, I think if you're an operator in Ontario in good standing and you apply in Alberta, you're going to get in. But yeah, mean, the basics of the market, I suppose, for a start, This is pretty novel, think really, and certainly in North America, Alberta, like Ontario, will launch with both online sports betting and online casino at once, which in the US particularly doesn't really happen. um There's going to be a tax rate about the same as Ontario, about 20%. One of the nuance differences there is that they're taking a little bit off the top before they tax operators at 20 % to give deductions. One deduction goes to First Nations, which in Alberta is a huge, you know, there's a huge, huge not only First Nation communities, but First Nation gaming interests on the land-based casino side of things. Alberta, to everyone's credit, does seem to have made a real effort to sort of bring First Nations in on the ground floor, so to speak, from day one and have them involved. We'll hear a little bit more about exactly how that will work and the nuances there. Yeah, I mean, there's a couple of interesting things. You know, they seem like fairly minor points, I guess, but know, Alberta already announced that election betting and political betting won't be allowed in the Alberta market, whereas in Ontario, that falls under what they just what they call novelty wagering, like betting on the Canadian ah election, know, the Prime Minister Mark Carney, uh the election in 2025 was a pretty big business in Ontario on the novelty wagering side of things. Like obviously, sort of you want to make sure it's done responsibly so there are regulations in place, but generally speaking it's allowed. Alberta has come out and said, we don't want to have this in our market. I haven't really been able to sort of like peel back the curtain so far on the exact rationale behind that. So I'm sure that might be something that comes up during the event, talk a little bit more about that sort of stuff. So it's these sort of little differences that I think reflect maybe the political makeup of Alberta compared to Ontario or going be a lot of talk about lessons learned from four years of Ontario. Obviously, Ontario has iterated quite significantly over the course of its lifespan so far. Alberta has the benefit of hindsight, right? Looking back at what Ontario has done. So think we'll hear a lot of comparisons between Ontario and Alberta. And yeah, I mean, it will be really, really interesting because I think everybody now is sort of, everyone who wants to be involved in Alberta has, you know, got their applications in, they're getting, you know, maybe getting people on the ground, they're sitting down and figuring out, know, what's an Alberta sports better, for example, going to want to see that maybe an Ontario sports better doesn't really register as much for them. Um, and now with all that planning going on, you know, by the time we roll around, you know, by the time we've rolled around to this event, we're only really two months out from, from launch day. So we're really finally, you he said we've been talking about it for years. We are finally on the home stretch now to launching. And I think that excitement is probably going to be pretty palpable, uh, through SBC Summit Canada. Yeah, for sure. And just before we move on, we've said that Ontario is a huge market. Kind of felt like it went from 0 to 100 straight away. Now we know, obviously, Toronto and Ottawa are cities in Canada. Most of the population lives in Ontario. Could you give us a little bit of a sense of the makeup of Alberta from maybe a population standpoint, a sporting standpoint, and maybe tell us, you know, Should we be setting our expectations a little bit lower than Ontario? How do you that shaping up? I mean, I think that's fair to say. mean, for a start, the big, big factor is that Ontario has a significantly larger population than Alberta. I can't remember the exact numbers, but I'm pretty sure that Alberta is about a third of the size of Ontario in terms of population. But what we have heard people say and people point out is that Alberta, you know, it's pretty business friendly. terms of taxing businesses. I think it has the highest sort of disposable income on average of any province for its residents. And Alberta is a huge, huge... One thing it has in common with Alberta is a big, big, sports province, right? You've got Edmonton Oilers, Calgary Flames, you've got CFL, Canadian Football League. There's obviously strong interests in other major league sports, NFL. Toronto Blue Jays might be based in Ontario, but they are, hear them described a lot of the time as Canada's team. So the sports fandom is really there. And I think another thing that's in common is that, like I sort of mentioned before on the First Nations side of things, there is a really, really, really robust, long-standing gaming market in Alberta. And I'm not just talking about land-based casinos. I think most of the estimates seem to suggest that it depends which report and which estimate you believe, but I think that we're talking about 75 % of all online gambling play in Alberta is currently done on unregulated platforms rather than Play Alberta, which is the government platform. We also know that some operators who are looking to transition to the regulated market have been operational in Alberta for some years, which I don't think is going to be a problem for them as long as they go through the compliance process and transition to the regulated market, shut down all unregulated play in advance. That was a stipulation from Alberta. So there's a lot of attributes, I think, about this province that despite the smaller population, suggest that a commercial regulated iGaming market, particularly with both verticals, sports betting and casino, can really sort of hit the ground running. But yeah, it'll be interesting to see how they report their revenue actually. Ontario started doing it, was only doing it quarterly for a long time and then changed to monthly, I think, last year, like early 2025, I think. I imagine Alberta will probably follow the monthly. blueprint that Ontario's laid down. And obviously I think it's fair to say you should expect the numbers to be smaller than Ontario. But I think that this is a province that is sort of, you know, has been ready and waiting for some time really for this. So it's a big, big milestone for Canadian gaming and for North American online gambling really in general, I think. think that it is when you look at it through the lens of sports betting and online casino going live at the same time and Learn how OptiMove's positionalist marketing is changing how iGaming teams operate. Discover how operators are using OptiMove's positionalist marketing platform to launch personalised CRM campaigns, dynamically change casino lobbies and bet slips, and create engaging game-wide experiences. Learn more at OptiMove.com. Welcome back to iGaming Daily. Now, Tom, it's not just Alberta and its imminent launch that's making us all talk about Canada at the moment. There's several other tidbits um that are driving conversations as we look ahead to SBC Summit Canada. One of those is the perennial topic of the advertising of sports betting, a controversial topic all around the world. But it's made headlines in Canada over last few years as well. And there's a couple of bills doing the rounds. Do want to give us a bit of a sense of what's going on there? Yeah. So mean, broad strokes, like quick overview, there's a uh federal bill that was actually, it's a years long effort now. passed, it's called the National Framework on Online Betting Advertising. That's not what it's, I've forgotten the actual name. But basically the bill is that, the idea is that the federal government would not necessarily coming, it's not about banning advertising this federal bill or anything like that, but it's, there is this prevailing idea among Canadian politicians at the federal level that now after a single event sports betting was legalized in 2021 and Ontario launched regulated iGaming in 2022, you know, four or five years on from that, there's a real feeling, I think, among some corners that it's time for the federal government to sort of set out, I guess, guidelines for what should or shouldn't be allowed on a sort of Canada wide level. Obviously Ontario and now Alberta will have their own pretty stringent, I will say, in my opinion, regulations on how operators can advertise. there's this bill that passed the Senate last year, it then passed the Senate, the new version passed the Senate in late 2025 and is now being discussed in the House of Commons, which is a new step. It didn't make it to the House of Commons the previous year. And to be honest, it looks like it has very, very large support in Canadian Parliament. So I wouldn't be surprised to see that pass down the line and maybe the makeup of, you know, sport, this is sports betting specific, this bill, the makeup of online sports betting, advertising, you know, regulation kind of change in the future. Naturally, that's going to be a huge topic. I think of this event, there is a panel. In fact, I think there are about two or three panels. I think we're to hear a range of opinions that the Canadian gaming association are quite staunch in their belief that federal oversight is not needed because can. Canada's criminal code gives the right to regulate gaming and all of it's sort of associated, you know, advertising, et cetera, gives that those rights to the province, to all the provinces. Um, but there are some people who definitely, I think maybe of the opinion that federal oversight, you know, may not be a bad thing as long as it's done sort of tactfully and doesn't impose upon the provinces. Um, and then there's also another topic that's just come up in very recently is there's an Ontario bill, which I don't think is really going to go very far because it's partisan liberal party bill in a province Ontario where the Conservative government is in power. But this bill would ban pretty much all online gambling advertising in Ontario specifically. That is naturally going to be a bit of a conversation starter. And then we've got a couple of other panels lined up. think I mentioned the Canadian Gaming Association, they came out at the start of this year with they're calling the code for responsible gambling advertising, which is sort of, you know, the CGA has a big, big, big membership of operators, suppliers, you know, and other affiliated kind of stakeholders in the industry. And the CGA with this code is basically said, you know, this is what we expect from our members. This is how what is already being done and what we are committing to doing in the future as a sort of group to make sure that advertising is responsible. It's not too pervasive, you know. And so that'll be a sort of another side of the advertising conversation. And then one thing I think will also be interesting is we're seeing a lot, not just Canada specific by any means, know, sites like Google and Meta and these sort of big tech firms, there's quite a lot of sort of the goalposts being moved on what is and isn't allowed in terms of advertising. There's also a panel, I think, lined up on that. So the advertising discussion at the event will be really interesting because you can... attendees are going to hear a real range of perspectives. And there's going to be a few sort of key focuses within the advertising topic, because it's certainly something that has got everybody talking. Well, not even particularly recently, right? This federal bill was first introduced late 2024. So, I mean, it's been on the agenda really as a huge topic for at least 18 months or so. it's a huge topic. It's something that, yeah, you write provokes opinion. lot of strong opinions as well, which always makes for a great panel. I'm sure the CGA will be great on that. know Paul Burns likes to put his opinions forward in the Canadian Game of Business magazine as well, which he has a column in, in each issue, so I'm sure people would like to go and read that. Something else that will be... uh ruling the conversations in Canada will be the World Cup, of course. Games will be taking place across North America, including in Canada. Obviously going to be a huge betting event and Alberta will go live, I think, a week before the World Cup final. What's going to be driving conversations in terms of the World Cup at SBCC in Canada? Yeah, I mean, think the World Cup is super interesting because obviously like in North America, you have these sort of flash points of betting activity, right? You have Super Bowl goes without saying, you have March Madness kind of goes without saying. You have particularly Major League Playoff season, right? NHL obviously in Canada, hockey is king, playoff season. um The start of new seasons in the fall, NFL, NBA. The World Cup is going to be a real sort of lightning in a bottle thing, I think, particularly what's key here, I think, to bear in mind. as a North America wide kind of approach is that obviously the World Cup is in three different countries. You've got Canada, you've got the US, you've got Mexico. Some operators, several operators, think. Somebody like Rusty Interactive's Bet Rivers brand comes to mind. You have a lot of operators who are uh operational with pretty deep footprints in all three of these countries. This is a huge, huge opportunity, I think, for these operators. And the focus of the panel that we have that's particularly World Cup focused. Again, I'm sure it will come up throughout other panels, but the World Cup specific panel we have. The sort of key question I think we're to be asking on that is how can operators, suppliers, affiliates, all these groups will be involved. How would you sort of take a lightning in a bottle event like the World Cup and turn it into sort of lasting engagement and lasting growth? Because you'll get a flurry of activity, obviously. Don't forget another thing important in North America, like the time zone. Um, you know, the last few world cups, you know, you're looking at Qatar, you're looking at Russia, the tight for North American gambling, the gambling activity has still been there, but the times in terms of watching games and stuff, not really been very friendly. Now you're talking afternoon, evening games. Perfect really for that sort of that, that engagement. So that I think that's going to be a really interesting panel is how do you, not only how do you. promote and market around the World Cup and what kind of, you know, what kind of special betting markets or whatever, you know, how do you sort of soup up your sports betting offering? But I think two things, like how do you convert that into long-term growth, player engagement and retention? How do you build off a massive cultural and sporting event like that? So that six months down the line, it's not just, Oh, remember that World Cup? That was cool. You know, you've got some kind of lasting effect. And also, you know, we talked again about Alberta, guess the timing, like you say, it's going to go just before World Cup. So, you know, I think we're probably talking more like Ontario here in terms of private sector and commercial operators, you know, having markets, provinces where you have online sports betting and online casino, we hear a lot about the importance of cross-sell between those two verticals. So is there something that operators can do with their online casino offering? Is there something that online casino gaming suppliers can sort of brand? on like casino and slots games around the World Cup and sort of create that cross cell to drive, I guess, player engagement across not just sports betting, but casino. I think it's a really, you know, it will be a really, really interesting, particularly that, that, that sort of hour long panel, I think, because there's no, you know, there's, no doubting that the World Cup is going to be, you know, huge, huge topic conversation. Then obviously we have SBC Summit Americas. in June as well, which will be around about the time. think that's in the first week of the World Cup. it's already, you have that kind of lasting conversation. So I think SBC Summit Canada will give a good sort of good preview window, if you will, into what might be coming in terms of World Cup betting. you know, Canada have a few bright sparks in the squad and I think they would much rather have Bosnia in the group than Italy, I think from a... uh on paper perspective. think so, yeah. So hey, you know, that could be a really exciting summer for Canada and then in turn, the operators who are live there. Tom, we're kind of close to running out of time, but is there anything else that we should be paying attention to as we sort of get into the final run up towards SPC Summit Canada? Listen, as you're aware, hosting podcasts with me, I could probably talk about this for hours. Um, but I mean, yeah, there's a couple of other interesting trends. will say one that I find fascinating that I've been covering for Canadian gaming business. And we actually have, uh, uh, something in the magazine about it. Thank you for the magazine plug. You can pick that up on shelves at SPC summit, Canada and Toronto. Um, is the rise of sort of how first nations gaming in Canada is evolving. This is fascinating to me. And I think it's somewhat under covered still from a sort of reporting perspective, like particularly in British Columbia in Alberta, we've seen a real trend of first nations. buying land-based casinos. Great Canadian Entertainment have sold, I think, eight of their nine casinos in British Columbia to various First Nations groups. There's also a lot happening in Alberta on the land-based side, which obviously might have longer-term repercussions considering iGaming is coming. That will be fascinating. We've got a couple of panels on that. um Obviously, responsible gaming will be a key focus, as it always is, not just at these events, but for the industry, really. Um, and then, yeah, there's a couple, you know, AI, I think is always got to be a topic these days. I'm actually hosting a fireside chat with, um, an executive from Ontario lottery and gaming about, uh, uh, agentic AI and how operators. And I guess other stakeholders in the industry can sort of employ AI, not only as like an, an, an, an additive feature for their, for their gambling offerings, but also like really bake it in and, chart the path forward in a responsible way using AI. think that will be an interesting discussion. And then the last thing I will flag is that given that everything that's happening in North America and beyond with sporting integrity, we've seen a lot of sports betting scandals recently. This is something that Canada has sort of taken more of a front seat on in recent times. And I think we're going to hear at the event from, there's an entity called Sport Integrity Canada. And we're going to hear from their senior manager of investigations, I think about basically, you know, how Canada as an entire ecosystem tackles what is a really, really difficult topic. I think that if you're not careful can give gambling a bit of a bad name, I think really for people outside the industry, you know, if you see these news of these scandals coming up. So think there's going to be some talk about, you what the industry is doing, what Canada on the whole is doing, you know, in conjunction with the gaming industry to really combat sort of the potential for betting manipulation and sporting integrity being compromised. I think that is a very, very timely discussion. Personally, that's a panel I'm going to make sure to sit on because I think that'll be fascinating to listen through. I mean, don't, it sounds cliched, I guess, but I really feel like there is something for everyone here because we're going to try and cover all bases. Because like I said, at the start of this, is just such a fascinating time for gambling, not only in Canada, but North America wide and I think worldwide really as well. A lot of European people in the Canadian market. yeah, it's going to be a really, really interesting week. It's going to be a great event. There's going to be great conversations and of course there's going to be plenty of headlines that I'm sure you and the team will be writing. So Tom, thanks very much for taking the time. I really appreciate it. And to the audience, make sure you show your interest in SBC Summit Canada, pick up the magazine. attend Tom's Fireside Chats. Thanks to our sponsor Optimove. Thank you for tuning in to today's episode of iGaming Daily. Come back tomorrow to keep up to date with all the latest global gambling news. you