Everything You Need to Know About Alberta’s New Sports Betting Market

🔢 Key sports betting facts & figures

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📰 What happened in Alberta?

The short version: progress.

The long version: It’s more like what’s happening, which is an ongoing process to open up the province’s regulated market for online gambling.

As mentioned above, Play Alberta is the only authorized option for bettors right now. But, as also mentioned above, many bettors in Alberta are just using unauthorized operators that may be regulated and licensed offshore or outside the province, but not by the province itself. 

So what the Alberta government is doing is creating a regulatory structure in which private-sector operators can get licensed and regulated and start taking bets with the blessing of the provincial government.

Still, a lot has indeed happened.

Take a step back

To offer the full picture, we need to go back a few years to 2021. That’s when federal lawmakers in Ottawa passed legislation decriminalizing single-game sports betting in Canada. This freed up provincial governments to “conduct and manage” legal sports betting in a less parlay-reliant way. 

What this meant for most Canadian provinces is that their government-owned lottery and gaming corporations, such as the AGLC, could let their provincial sportsbooks take single-game bets. And most Canadian provinces have stuck to this, giving their lotteries a legal monopoly over online sports betting.

But not every province has stuck to this path.

After years of work, Ontario launched a competitive iGaming market in April 2022, making it the first province in Canada to authorize multiple private-sector operators to do business within its borders. That model was challenged in court and upheld, showing other provinces that there is a legal way to let other, non-government-owned online sportsbooks and internet-based casinos operate in their jurisdictions. 

Good chance of Alberta being the only jurisdiction in North America to authorize new forms of online gambling this year (not counting Missouri, that happened in 2024):

Alberta iGaming, Sports Betting Bill Passed By Legislature https://t.co/XJ6D9TgtAM @Covers

— Geoff Zochodne (@GeoffZochodne) May 8, 2025

Later in 2022, Danielle Smith became the premier of Alberta after winning the leadership of the province’s United Conservative Party. Smith and the UCP then followed that up by winning another (albeit reduced) majority government in a May 2023 election.

Soon after, in July 2023, Smith issued a "mandate" letter to Dale Nally, the Minister of Service Alberta and Red Tape Reduction, saying she expected Nally (the province's de facto iGaming minister) to "finish developing and implementing Alberta's online gaming strategy with a focus on responsible gaming and provincial and Indigenous revenue generation."

It seemed things were beginning to heat up, but the Alberta government opted to take it slow after hearing from various industry stakeholders. In October 2024, Nally told Covers that the government planned to pass a bill further outlining its vision.

That legislation, the iGaming Alberta Act, was ultimately passed last May, detailing the legal framework for the new online gambling market. 

Good things grow ...

The structure outlined in Bill 48 will be similar to the one in Ontario, with operators getting licensed by the AGLC (which will continue to act as an operator in its own right) and signing contracts with a new government entity, the Alberta iGaming Corporation (AiGC). In Ontario, operators register with the Alcohol and Gaming Commission and execute contracts with iGaming Ontario. 

The ball was then back in the court of the government and AGLC to further flesh out the new iGaming market's rules and regulations. More details were released just last week, when the AGLC began accepting "registration" applications and published the first draft of the rules for operators. It's not exactly apples-to-apples, but registration is a sort-of licensing process for operators.

A launch of the new Alberta iGaming market is now closer than ever, but there's still a ways to go. The iGaming standards still need to be finalized and contracts must be executed with operators, among other things. That said, it looks very likely that Alberta's new iGaming market, complete with multiple operators, will launch at some point this year.

So, progress. It’s being made, and Alberta is on track to become the second province in Canada to create a competitive and regulated market for online gambling. 

💰What Alberta bettors should expect

• 💰 More (regulated) choice: 

  Alberta is going to expand the number of authorized iGaming operators from one to, well, more than one. How many exactly will be up to operators. However, Alberta’s government has not capped the number of online sportsbooks or casinos that there could be, so the sky is the limit. 

  Ontario’s iGaming market could give a hint as to what Albertans should expect. There, around 50 operators are regulated and authorized to offer online sports betting, casino games, poker, and bingo. Those operators include bet365, BetMGM, Bet99, DraftKings, and FanDuel, as well as the online gambling site of the government-owned Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp. 

  Keep in mind, though, that Alberta doesn’t have the same kind of population as Ontario. It's actually the fourth-most populous province in Canada, trailing British Columbia and Quebec as well.

  What's more, Alberta is proposing what could be a slightly higher tax rate and greater licensing costs than what Ontario charges. Ontario requires operators to hand over around 20% of their revenue and pay $100,000 a year for each iGaming site they offer. Alberta's current revenue-sharing proposal is nominally 20%, but that would be after deducting a certain amount of gross revenue for social responsibility programs and First Nations, meaning the tax rate would be a bit more than Ontario's. The proposed fee structure would include a one-time application fee of $50,000 and an annual registration fee of $150,000, which is higher than Ontario as well.

  In other words, the cost of doing business in Alberta could be higher than Ontario, which may mean fewer operators. Time will tell.

  Even so, Alberta is still similar in size to U.S. states like Louisiana or Kentucky, where there are competitive markets for online sports betting with multiple operators. So, at the very least, you should expect a handful of regulated bookmakers.

• 📱 iCasino, too:
  

  Alberta’s iGaming market will include online casinos as well. So, operators could offer SGPs, online slots, and table games like blackjack, giving big gaming brands another good reason to join. In Ontario, for example, the bulk of online gambling handle is attributable to casino games, such as nearly $8 billion in action in November. So, it’s a big selling point. Sports betting revenue can be buffeted by game results; sometimes favourites keep winning and Overs keep hitting. Slot margins are consistent, and consistently good for operators.

  Also: poker, although how big the games will be in Alberta could hinge on a major court case launched by the Ontario government. Many of Alberta's iGaming rules will be the same as Ontario's, including that all players will have to be located within the province. However, Ontario's government referred a question to its appeals court in 2024 asking if it could let its players participate in games with rivals from outside the country.

  While the Court of Appeal for Ontario mostly said yes, the case has since been forwarded to the Supreme Court of Canada. If the Supreme Court keeps that decision intact, Alberta-regulated operators could connect poker players in the province to gamblers abroad. It's possible the Alberta and Ontario iGaming markets could join forces and pool online gambling liquidity as well, which could keep online poker games sizable enough.

• 📊 Growing pains: 

  With all that said, Albertans may want to prepare themselves for some disruption. Given that most online gambling in the province is done through operators that are not regulated by the province, there’s a good chance the operator they’re using plans to transition into the new regulated market and come under the province’s rules. 

  In Ontario, for instance, sportsbook operators had to settle any preexisting action before they could launch in the regulated market. This meant voiding futures bets that their players had made that would settle after the launch of the new iGaming market.

  Alberta sports bettors should also expect to be asked for identification to help verify their identity to operators. A regulated system means knowing who’s playing in it, so be ready to hand over something that shows you’re at least 18, which will be the legal minimum age for iGaming in the province.
  
  Lastly (and this somewhat ties into the poker conversation), since Alberta will require that all players be in the province, this could put a damper on "pay-to-play" daily fantasy sports contests. Notably, DraftKings and FanDuel shuttered their DFS contests in Ontario before the new iGaming market launched there. Something similar could happen in Alberta, but nothing is certain yet.

🔎 What’s different about Alberta?

Why this market isn’t cookie-cutter:

• It all depends on where you live: If you live in Ontario, what Alberta’s doing will be very familiar. That because the province is adopting a very Ontario-like framework for online gambling. If you live in Quebec, what Alberta will be doing is very different from the legal monopoly that Loto-Québec has. Basically, if you live in any province but Ontario, what Alberta is doing is unlike what your provincial government is doing.
  
  
• The human touch: Funnily enough, Alberta does seem to be putting more of a focus on the opening of brick-and-mortar sportsbooks than Ontario did. The AGLC is already laying out a process to apply for a license to run a retail sportsbook at the province’s casinos, racing entertainment centers, and professional sports venues. Ontario doesn't have a stadium with a sportsbook in it, although there are casinos with betting kiosks.
  
  
• Knock that off: Alberta is also poised to take a harder line with "grey market" operators than Ontario did, with rules requiring operators to cease any "unregulated" activity before joining the regulated market.

❓ Alberta betting FAQ