There is good reason to believe that Alberta will be a real moneymaker for the online gambling industry.
It may even be a near billion-dollar market. Someday, maybe.
- Alberta is preparing to launch a regulated iGaming market, which would make it Canada’s second province after Ontario to allow private online sportsbook and casino operators.
- Comparisons to Ontario’s multibillion-dollar market and data from the Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis Commission suggest Alberta’s total online gambling revenue could be in the hundreds of millions annually.
- The Alberta iGaming market will include preexisting operators and those that have yet to launch online sports betting and iCasino in the province.
First, though, that market needs to open.
Alberta has been working for years on a competitive, regulated framework for online sports betting and internet-based casino games. The plan for the new Alberta sports betting and iGaming market is to welcome, license, and regulate private-sector operators, which will hand over a bit more than 20% of their revenue to the province.
When Alberta’s iGaming market launches, which some companies now expect to happen in the late spring or early summer, it will bring the number of provincially regulated online gambling options for residents from one, Play Alberta, to multiple. It will also make Alberta the second province in Canada to authorize private-sector iGaming competition, after Ontario launched a similar market in 2022.
Alberta’s de facto iGaming minister, Dale Nally, has said the provincial government doesn’t see this as a “cash grab” but instead as a way to provide more consumer protection. Still, some cash will be grabbed, including to support responsible gambling programs and the province’s First Nations.
“Once the regulated market is established, Alberta’s government will be able to capture gambling revenues currently lost to unregulated sites often located outside of Alberta,” Nally said last year. “This new revenue can be used to support First Nations as well as social responsibility initiatives and other government priorities.”
Alberta will be a relatively big deal in the world of legalized sports betting and online casino gambling.
It seems unlikely that there will be a flurry of state-level launches in the U.S. later this year (Maine may be one, at least), especially with federally regulated prediction markets complicating things with their nationwide form of de facto sports wagering.
That leaves Alberta as a relative certainty for major gambling operators like DraftKings, which is budgeting for a launch of online sports betting and iCasino in the province later this year.
Super Group, Betway's parent company, has baked into its 2026 estimates a Q2 launch of online sports betting and iCasino in Alberta's yet-to-launch regulated iGaming market. pic.twitter.com/TlAypxbsDe
— Geoff Zochodne (@GeoffZochodne) February 24, 2026
Nevertheless, there are numbers that suggest Alberta would be a priority for the online gambling industry even if it were just one of many new jurisdictions set to launch. The province has the potential to generate plenty of iGaming revenue for both private operators and the province. That's why brands like DraftKings, Betway, and BetRivers are lining up to join its regulated market.
To start, there is already a province in Canada running the same sort of iGaming market that Alberta aims to launch: Ontario. The figures reported by Ontario's iGaming agency suggest serious potential in Alberta as well.
Ontario launched its competitive iGaming market in April 2022, and there are now around 50 operators and more than 80 sites offering online sports betting, iCasino, poker, and bingo.
In January, more than $9.5 billion was bet using those sites, generating more than $400 million in revenue for operators and the province, which keeps around 20% of receipts. The first year of Ontario's new iGaming market saw around $35.6 billion wagered and approximately $1.4 billion in total gaming revenue produced.
(Quick aside: We're mostly talking about revenue in this article, not total wagering or "handle." As the Ontario numbers indicate, the total amount bet in the province, and in Alberta, will regularly be in the billions. However, some of those bets will be won. The revenue mentioned here is what's left over after paying those winners.)
Some juicy stats
Data provided to Covers by Juice Reel, an app sports bettors can use to track their plays and that offers analytics and the ability to tail other bettors, suggests similarities between Alberta and Ontario bettors.
Juice Reel said the average bet size for Alberta-based users was $32, and the average monthly handle for January was $5,151. Albertans were also using, on average, 1.3 online sportsbooks, and 37% of their bets were parlays.
To compare, the average bet size for Juice Reel’s Ontario-based users was $34, and the average monthly handle was $8,679. The average number of books used was 2.17, and the parlay percentage was 41%. The median bet size in both jurisdictions was $10.
There are some caveats to the above worth noting. For starters, this is based on bets tracked using Juice Reel. Moreover, anyone using a bet-tracking app like Juice Reel is probably a notch or two above the most recreational of bettors.
Juice Reel’s data also includes offshore and provincially regulated books, as well as daily fantasy sites. However, not every single book that Alberta and Ontario bettors may be using is captured in the numbers.
DraftKings feels pretty certain that the launch of its online sportsbook/casino in Alberta is "around the corner," and is forecasting its financials accordingly:https://t.co/1R5ZCywuHk @Covers
— Geoff Zochodne (@GeoffZochodne) February 13, 2026
Still, Juice Reel noted the data suggests similarities between Alberta and Ontario. However, the former has yet to implement an Ontario-like iGaming model and authorize some of the operators present only in Ontario at the moment.
Ontario is also Canada's most populous province, with a population of around 16 million. It's unlikely Alberta and its approximately five-million-strong populace will produce the same numbers. Still, just the rough population math alone hints that Alberta could be worth around a third of what Ontario is doing. That would mean around $460 million in iGaming-related revenue in Year 1.
That would be just to start. There is evidence that the average Albertan could out-gamble the average Ontarian as well.
Anecdotally, you could point to Albertans' intense love affair with the Edmonton Oilers’ “50/50” raffle, which has raised hundreds of millions of dollars for charity. You could also point to research by Statistics Canada showing the average annual salary in Alberta is roughly $30,000 higher than in Ontario.
It’s worth noting, too, that Ontario’s iGaming revenue has continued to grow since its launch. While approximately $1.4 billion in total gaming revenue was produced in Year 1, more than $4 billion was generated in 2025, according to figures from iGaming Ontario.
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How Alberta's currently playing
Furthermore, there are financials you could parse from Alberta’s only authorized iGaming operator at the moment to project the overall size of the province’s iGaming market.
The Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis Commission (AGLC) reported in its most recent annual report that its online gambling net sales (or net revenue) for the year ending March 31, 2025, were almost $270 million, up $35 million from the previous fiscal year.
That revenue flowed from "five distinct gaming experiences" offered via the AGLC's Play Alberta platform: casino, "instant" games, live dealer games, lottery, and online sports betting.
The bulk of Play Alberta's online gambling revenue comes from money bettors lose playing casino-style games, which accounted for 73.1% of net sales for the most recently reported year, or $197.3 million. Sports betting, meanwhile, generated the least for Play Alberta of all of its verticals, producing just shy of $8 million in net sales, or 3% of the total.
This, however, only captures part of the existing market for online gambling in Alberta. It’s estimated that the bulk of internet-based wagering happens with companies that may be regulated abroad or outside the province, but not by the province itself.
This so-called “grey” or “black” market is earning the lion’s share of business from Alberta’s online gamblers. The robust and "unregulated" market is arguably the chief reason Alberta is launching a regulated iGaming market in the first place - to try to capture that activity.
"Unregulated online gambling is already widely available across the province, with some providers operating with limited or no player protection or social responsibility measures," the provincial government says. "Based on recent survey data, unregulated operators are estimated to capture approximately 70% of Alberta’s total iGaming market."
This suggests Play Alberta accounts for around 30% of iGaming-related revenue being generated in the province. That would also mean the overall size of Alberta’s online gambling market is somewhere in the ballpark of $900 million in annual revenue.
It’s a pretty loose estimate, and an already old one, as the most recent AGLC figures only go to March 31, 2025. However, if the $270 million in Play Alberta-related net sales is just 30% of the total addressable market, that implies another $630 million is being earned elsewhere.
Guesstimation time
Again, this is a lot of estimating, forecasting, and extrapolating, but it’s not far off from the “B” word: “billion.”
Other data suggests even more upside for Alberta.
A 2024 study conducted by research firm H2 Gambling Capital on behalf of the International Betting Integrity Association indicated there could be hundreds of millions of dollars in "unregulated" online sports betting revenue in Alberta. That revenue could be funnelled into Alberta's regulated market.
"If (an Ontario-like iGaming) model was introduced from the start of 2025, that could bring around $400m in taxable sports betting (gross gaming revenue) back onshore during 2025-28 on current offshore market forecasts," the report said. "However, a regulated commercial market would also be expected to grow the overall market and the true taxable GGR potential is therefore expected to be higher."
Alberta's forthcoming iGaming market could eventually generate more than US$700M a year in revenue, according to Citizens JMP Securities analyst Jordan Bender.
— Geoff Zochodne (@GeoffZochodne) June 26, 2024
"If $700M of gaming revenue is met, it would represent the eighth-largest gaming market in North America." pic.twitter.com/E6IJX9DASe
This additional revenue for the regulated market would be purely tied to online sports betting. It doesn’t even include iCasino, which the Play Alberta figures suggest would make up the majority of iGaming income. Play Alberta’s online sportsbook is only providing a low single-digit share of its revenue as well.
So, there is potentially even more room to grow. And it’s here that we start drawing nearer to the billion-dollar mark again.
Another 2024 study, done by analysts at investment bank Citizens, forecast Alberta's iGaming market opportunity could top US$700 million a year. That would work out to around $950 million in Canadian currency.
It would be, the bank analysts noted, a truly significant jurisdiction for operators.
“If $700M of gaming revenue is met, it would represent the eighth-largest gaming market in North America,” the Citizens team wrote.
