The day has finally arrived.
Alberta launched its competitive market for online sports betting and internet casino gambling just after midnight on Monday, the culmination of years of work by lawmakers, regulators, and the industry.
That means there are now multiple provincially regulated options for Alberta sports betting and iGaming, rather than just one, Play Alberta.
- Alberta has launched a competitive regulated market for online sports betting and casino gambling, giving residents multiple legal options beyond Play Alberta.
- The province hopes to shift bettors from offshore and unregulated sites to provincially licensed operators, which will share about 20% of their revenue with the government.
- Major brands including bet365, DraftKings, and FanDuel are entering the market, with strong revenue expectations and a launch that just so happens to coincide with the FIFA World Cup semifinals.
These newly authorized operators will range from the biggest of the big, online betting giants such as bet365, DraftKings, and FanDuel, to smaller and more boutique. But they will now all enjoy the blessing of the Alberta government and are free to take bets with the province’s backing.
“We'll be judged by Albertans, but we're excited,” said Dan Keene, chief executive officer of the Alberta iGaming Corporation (AiGC), which is the Crown agency that is “conducting and managing” the province’s iGaming market.
“It's the culmination of a lot of work by a lot of people,” Keene added in a recent interview with Covers.
Service Alberta and Red Tape Reduction Minister Dale Nally (aka the iGaming minister) said during a G2E panel that he hopes if he’s back in Vegas a year from now he’ll be talking about their competitive sports betting/iGaming market, getting props from operators for easy access.
— Geoff Zochodne (@GeoffZochodne) October 9, 2024
Alberta’s iGaming launch is a huge shift, and it’s also been a huge lift. Reforming online gambling in Alberta has taken years, and the province now becomes the second in Canada to launch a competitive iGaming market after Ontario did so in 2022.
Grey be gone
One of the goals of the market is to capture more online gambling in Alberta via provincially regulated operators.
Right now, the Alberta government believes around 70% of all iGaming happens with operators that might be regulated abroad or outside the province (the so-called "grey" market), but not by the province itself.
In other words, most online gambling in Alberta is not happening with the Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis Commission's (AGLC) Play Alberta, which was the province's only authorized iGaming platform until Monday morning.
"Online gambling is here," Service Alberta and Red Tape Reduction Minister Dale Nally said in the legislature last year. "What we're trying to do is we're trying to make it safer."
So what the Alberta government, AGLC (which will act as both operator and regulator in the new iGaming market), and the AiGC are shooting for is to reverse that trend and ensure the majority of online sports betting and casino gaming happens with provincially regulated sites.
“I think we're going to have a very strong market launch,” Keene said. “And I think we're going to have big adoption by Albertans.”
The AiGC certainly has a lot of partners to help it in this effort. The corporation has signed numerous agreements with sports betting and iCasino operators that outline their obligations (such as handing over around 20% of their revenue to the province) but also authorize them to take bets from Albertans.
The AGLC just updated its list of registered/licensed iGaming operators ahead of Monday's launch of a competitive online gambling market in Alberta. Not much change, but I did notice that Betano is now signed up: pic.twitter.com/P2k5BHMrR4
— Geoff Zochodne (@GeoffZochodne) July 10, 2026
Those brands should be pretty well-known in Alberta. And if Albertans don’t know these brands yet, they may know them soon enough, given the advertising and marketing campaigns that will roll out.
The industry has relatively high expectations for Alberta, too. Estimates of the market’s potential suggest $1 billion in gross gaming revenue is within reach in a year of the new regulatory framework being in place. The province, again, will get a cut of that money.
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The timing is impeccable
Alberta’s newly authorized operators are also launching, or relaunching, in Alberta at an opportune time for sportsbooks. The World Cup tournament is nearing its end, but two semifinal matches loom on Tuesday, and bettors will be looking for somewhere to get down on them.
“Insane timing with the World Cup,” said Trip Stoddard, head of development at bet365 (one of Alberta’s newly regulated operators), in an interview with Covers before the launch. “The semis, I think, is an awesome time for customers to be able to have new products, new opportunities, and we're looking forward to that.”
Alberta is largely borrowing from the rules that were laid out in Ontario more than four years ago, but there are key differences between the provinces.
Statistics suggest that Alberta is younger and richer than Ontario on a per-person basis. Bettors in the two provinces cheer for different teams and might have greater interest in different sports.
(Both provinces, it should be noted, do not have the same kind of concerns about prediction markets as some U.S. states do. While there are prediction markets in Canada, they are limited in what they can offer, including rules that forbid offering sports-related event contracts.)
Made in Alberta
Alberta is also putting in place some rules that are different than the ones in Ontario, even if Alberta’s regulated iGaming market heavily draws on the Ontario experience.
But bet365’s learnings about Canada include that bettors here have “more experience,” Stoddard said, which lines up with the general understanding that a lot of people are betting already. It’s just not always with the sportsbook the province may want.
“I think one thing we've learned is you can't bring a product to Canada without asking Canadians what they want, without bringing Canadians in the room and asking what they're watching, what they want to bet on, what they want the app to look like, and trying to use that local expertise to actually help tailor our products,” Stoddard said.
