If you were an online gambler in Alberta, chances are you were already using platforms outside of Play Alberta like Bet365 or other popular sports betting apps that weren’t licensed in the province. That makes sense: Play Alberta only captured about a third of the online gambling market, and the rest of the landscape is filled with international platforms. With limited games and options, it’s easy to see why many players looked elsewhere.
Alberta is now moving forward with the iGaming Alberta Act (Bill 48), which allows private companies to enter the market legally and become licensed. For someone already using grey-market gambling sites, this may not feel like a big change. But the key difference is regulation: these companies will now operate under government oversight.
Grey-market apps weren’t going anywhere, so bringing them under regulation isn’t necessarily a bad idea. Some might even call it a form of harm reduction (but don’t mention that around certain critics or they will call it woke).
I wouldn’t be raising the alarm if this were a carefully designed system focused on protecting gamblers. But Ontario has already seen an increase in gambling-related problems, with calls seeking help rising by roughly 30% after private gambling companies were introduced. That may indicate greater awareness, but it also closely mirrors the rapid expansion of gambling itself.
If Alberta implements proper regulations, experts suggest this could be a positive move. Algorithms could monitor gambling patterns and flag problematic behavior. But here’s the challenge: how strict should these protections be? More guardrails mean less gambling revenue, which creates a clear conflict of interest. After all, the government now stands to collect taxes from these private operators. How motivated will they be to enforce strong protections when their revenue depends on player activity?
The normalization of online gambling will inevitably increase gambling-related issues. Non-profit organizations will likely feel the impact of more gambling addiction.
There’s also a financial concern: land-based casinos are taxed at higher rates than online operators. This imbalance could reduce traffic to in-person casinos, cutting overall revenue and potentially lowering the funds that go to charities. Alberta could offset this by taxing private online gambling more heavily and diverting revenue to charitable programs. However, reports of lobbying by individuals with ties to the UCP raise questions about whether these changes are likely to happen. Lobbying is legal but there’s a clear conflict of interest in who is shaping these policies.
The new system promises that people can self-exclude universally from both online and land-based gambling. That sounds promising but it was already somewhat possible through the dedicated Self-Exclusion website. There was just one small but unusual difference. If you went through self-exclusion from the Play Alberta app, it only banned you from that app so you could still go to land-based casinos or access grey market apps.
The new system is better in that it covers all online and in-person venues all in one location, but it’s still entirely voluntary. And if the guardrails are weak, how many people will actually reach self-exclusion before problems escalate?
Alberta is now enjoying millions of dollars in extra revenue. You might think that means more investment in gambling support groups and prevention programs. But that’s unclear. Around a year ago, when revenue was at another all-time high with year-over-year increases, the government cut funding to a non-profit that provided resource guidance to callers and prevention presentations in schools.
The rationale? They were focusing on direct service providers, so non-profits like these weren’t considered important. That makes little sense. What use are counselors if people don’t even know how to access them? Even professionals working in resource centers struggle to navigate gambling addiction resources. How can someone struggling with gambling, one of the hardest addictions to break, find proper support? It’s too late when gamblers need intervention.
The UCP says they’ll impose some rules around advertising: no targeting kids and no using athletes to promote gambling products. That’s the least they can do. It’s better than nothing, but “better than nothing” shouldn’t be the standard.
Universal self-exclusion, time and financial limits, and basic behavior-pattern monitoring are the bare minimum. What else is the government going to do to protect Albertans’ interests beyond the bare minimum? There hasn’t been too much information out yet about the protections in place which is concerning.
Don’t expect taxes on private gambling companies to increase. Why would the government jeopardize a partnership with companies that Albertans were already using tax-free? With 11 former UCP members lobbying to push this change, there’s little incentive to implement stronger guardrails.
The government says this isn’t about generating more tax revenue. Optics aside, money is clearly a driving factor. The current system wasn’t helping Albertans, and with public healthcare being dismantled, access to proper support has decreased. To think the UCP is acting purely out of public protection is disingenuous.
We don’t allow ads for cigarettes in public, let alone illegal drugs like meth or cocaine. Why should gambling be treated differently? Kids will still see marketing even if it’s not explicitly targeted at them. Marketing finds its way around every rule. The massive budgets of private gambling companies will dominate attention, and resisting them will be nearly impossible. Asking the UCP to avoid big private interests is like asking an addict to avoid drugs—it’s not realistic.