After much anticipation and waiting, the Alberta government unveiled legislation this week that proposes a very Ontario-like system for authorizing and regulating private-sector sports betting and casino gambling websites.
Bill 48, the iGaming Alberta Act, sets out the foundation for a competitive market for online gambling in the Western Canadian province, with no limit on the number of operators but specific directions for who will do what.
That includes a new government agency, which will play a key role in making the new iGaming scheme legal.
So what exactly is Alberta proposing to do?
One more update re: today's iGaming/sports betting news in Alberta:
— Geoff Zochodne (@GeoffZochodne) March 27, 2025
- government wants "open and free" market (no cap on operators)
-possible launch "later on this year or even early next year"https://t.co/I9AU1nsJNj@Covers
If Bill 48 becomes law in its current form – and, given the governing United Conservative Party has a majority in the provincial parliament, that’s highly likely – Alberta will launch a competitive market for online sports betting and iGaming.
Instead of just government-owned Play Alberta authorized to take bets from residents, which is the current status quo, residents who are 18 and older would have multiple options for provincially regulated sportsbooks and Alberta online casino sites.
Some of those options are already available in the province’s so-called “grey market,” but they are regulated and licensed abroad or outside of Alberta, not by the province itself.
When Alberta’s iGaming market launches, which could be late this year or early 2026, names such as bet365, DraftKings, and FanDuel could be among the newly regulated options for consumers.
In this way, the final product for someone in Edmonton will look a lot like what's available to someone in Newark: private-sector apps and sites that are licensed by local regulators.
However, while sports betting and iGaming in Alberta will resemble what someone in New Jersey might be accustomed to, there are some important legal distinctions. And those differences would make Alberta sports betting more like Ontario than, say, Ohio.
This is how they do it
To start, the proposed legislation would make the Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis Commission (AGLC) the regulator of the province’s new iGaming market.
Operators who want to join the market would need to “register” with the AGLC, a licensing-like process. That would put them squarely under the oversight of the commission (which also runs Play Alberta) and subject to whatever rules the regulator may make.
The commission could also impose fines of up to $500,000 for breaking the province's rules.
Oh boy: "In two separate incidents in 2024, BetMGM engaged marketing companies who offered cash to members of the public in return for opening new BetMGM accounts." https://t.co/t7ZBmmaqTk
— Geoff Zochodne (@GeoffZochodne) March 26, 2025
Bill 48 says the commission’s board can “establish standards and requirements” for operators to follow, which could be intended to prohibit certain people from using iGaming sites, provide player protections, and ensure responsible gambling, among other things.
The government could likewise issue regulations regarding “advertising, social responsibility, consumer protection or any other matter.”
One measure the Alberta government wants in place before its new iGaming market goes live is a "centralized self-exclusion system."
This would allow bettors worried about their gambling to ban themselves from every regulated site in the province all at once. It's also something Ontario lacked before the launch of its competitive iGaming market in April 2022.
iGaming incorporated
Yet the AGLC is just one piece of the puzzle. Another key component would be the Alberta iGaming Corporation that Bill 48 proposes to create, a government-owned entity with which private operators could sign contracts that officially let them offer online sports betting and iGaming in the province.
This may or may not sound familiar to followers of Canadian sports betting news, especially those who have paid attention to what Ontario has done. That’s because what Alberta is proposing to do is very similar to Ontario’s competitive iGaming market.
In Ontario, the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO) is the regulator of online gambling and has established standards for how iGaming can be conducted.
The provincial government also created a new agency, iGaming Ontario (iGO), before launching its new iGaming market.
It's with iGO that operators sign contracts outlining their duties and obligations before they can conduct business in the province’s regulatory scheme.
Using this model, there are now 50 provincially regulated operators of online sports betting, casino gambling, and poker sites in Ontario, including the government-owned Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp.
Two much?
A regulator and another government agency that also regulates may sound like a bit much. There are, however, business and legal reasons behind that structure.
The main legal reason is that the federal Criminal Code in Canada allows provincial governments to “conduct and manage” gambling, not private companies.
But Alberta aims to meet this legal requirement, despite the presence of private operators, by creating Alberta iGaming to conduct and manage online gambling on the government’s behalf.
Through contracts with operators, the province can still be legally viewed as conducting and managing iGaming even when a bettor is using an app like DraftKings or FanDuel.
This legal theory was tested in Ontario and survived a court challenge by the Quebec-based Mohawk Council of Kahnawà:ke (MCK), which has long licensed and regulated online gambling from their lands near Montreal.
The MCK had argued private-sector operators, and not the province, was really conducting and managing iGaming in Ontario. However, an Ontario Superior Court judge ruled last May that "Ontario, through iGO, is conducting and managing the igaming scheme,” and the MCK did not appeal.
“[iGO] retains a high degree of control over the operators in a wide array of the igaming scheme’s aspects,” Justice Lisa Brownstone wrote. “These are markers of who is in control of the igaming scheme, and who is its operating mind. That operating mind is iGO.”
Some news: the Mohawk Council of Kahnawà:ke tells me it won't appeal last week's landmark decision on Ontario's competitive iGaming market and will instead try to get satisfaction "via other avenues":https://t.co/zHbYBaJdvm @Covers
— Geoff Zochodne (@GeoffZochodne) May 22, 2024
Meanwhile, on the business side, having private-sector iGaming operators sign contracts with the AGLC, who will technically be their competitor via Play Alberta, could be awkward. And that would be in addition to the AGLC already acting as the market’s regulator.
Alberta's de facto iGaming minister, Service Alberta and Red Tape Reduction Minister Dale Nally, mentioned iGO and Ontario’s iGaming structure during a press conference on Wednesday.
"What we've seen as a best practice is separating the regulation from the conduct and manage piece, and so that's what we're going to be doing," Nally said in response to a question about the need for a new Crown corporation.
There are questions that Bill 48 doesn't answer.
Those include the tax rate for operators (in Ontario, it's 20%), potential side-effects for paid daily fantasy sports contests and poker (in Ontario, the launch of its new iGaming market killed DFS and wounded poker), and specific advertising rules (such as whether to allow athlete endorsements, which Ontario restricts).
The answers will likely come via regulation and the contractual terms to which operators must agree in Alberta.
There will be revenue for the government, though, despite the province saying that's not the point of the new iGaming market. One analyst has estimated that a competitive iGaming market in Alberta could eventually be worth more than US$700 million a year in revenue, a percentage of which would be owed to the province.
According to Bill 48, the new Alberta iGaming Corporation would be required to transfer its "surplus" funds to the province as well. Exactly what is surplus and what the government's share of iGaming revenue will be has yet to be determined, though.
More regulation?
With all that said, the whole setup is a bit funny.
Alberta is both a conservative and Conservative province. It's generally more right-wing than other parts of Canada, and it is governed by the United Conservative Party.
So why does Alberta and its Conservative government want more regulation, instead of less? Why is it creating a new government agency, instead of getting rid of old ones?
The official title of the person leading Alberta's new iGaming strategy, Nally, even includes the phrase "Red Tape Reduction."
But, in Nally's opinion, Alberta isn't creating more red tape by trying to better regulate online gambling.
If Bill 48 doesn't pass, iGaming won't stop in Alberta. It will just continue to grow, and mostly with sites that operate beyond provincial oversight.
"Let's be clear: red tape is by definition regulatory requirements that are unnecessary or redundant," Nally said. "With iGaming, as with the liquor and cannabis sectors, if we're going to open a private marketplace, we need regulatory oversight to make sure that all those operators are acting responsibly, and perhaps more importantly, all Albertans are protected."
