Western Standard - Will legalizing third-party websites help solve Alberta's online gambling money problems？

00:00:00.000 what's up guys thanks for taking the time to join me today uh we're gonna take a little break from

00:00:06.240 the alberta independence discussions a little bit and shift gears to one of the things that's

00:00:12.000 gonna be coming down the pipe here in alberta in just a little over a month when they introduce

00:00:18.640 their or when they unveil and really kick into gear the new iGaming strategy here in alberta

00:00:25.040 for online gambling that's going to take effect on july 13th and it's going to open the door

00:00:31.600 for third-party um companies to run online gambling here in alberta they already have about

00:00:38.880 28 companies signed up i believe so that's going to be a big deal here coming down the pipe

00:00:44.480 and today i have going to be joined by dr robert williams who's going to be taking some time to

00:00:49.760 talk about the new legislation with me and some of the impacts of it um dr williams um

00:00:57.040 uh quick intro on you i know that you're one of the research coordinators for the alberta

00:01:02.240 uh gambling research institute you're you teach or you're a professor of gambling or covering uh

00:01:08.400 gambling um topics at university of lethbridge and you're one of the leading sources on uh gambling

00:01:15.120 prevent problem gambling prevention and other things that want is there anything i missed um

00:01:20.320 to quickly introduce you here well actually online gambling is one of my expertise is uh areas of

00:01:26.800 expertise as well and i'm quite familiar with um i just uh am in the process of publishing a study

00:01:34.080 on um the ontario i gaming uh experiment so yeah you're talking the right person

00:01:42.860 Perfect. Well, I appreciate you taking the time to meet with me a little bit here.

00:01:47.060 And now you mentioned that you're familiar with Ontario's iGaming strategy and what's been happening there.

00:01:54.880 We've known that this new legislation in Alberta has been coming for a little while.

00:02:00.620 It got unveiled a couple of months ago and building up to July.

00:02:05.880 And so it's not new to Albertans. And so it's been able to sink in a little bit.

00:02:09.840 I'm wondering if you can give me quickly just an overall thoughts that you have on Alberta's new strategy.

00:02:17.840 Well, Alberta's getting into the iGaming markets because of the belief that the level of player and revenue channelization, i.e. the percentage of activity that's occurring on the government site, Play Alberta, is inadequate.

00:02:36.900 with. And my own independent research actually confirmed with a lot of that, that Alberta got

00:02:43.940 into the online gambling market pretty late. I mean, Saskatchewan was the only province that

00:02:51.820 came after us. Most of the provinces have been in this area for much longer than Alberta.

00:02:57.880 So consequently, we haven't been able to capture the online gambling market in Alberta as well as

00:03:04.940 other provinces and that's what's motivated uh adopting the ontario strategy which is letting

00:03:10.620 commercial operators in to capture that market and then taking a percentage of the gross gambling

00:03:17.660 revenue they get for provincial coffers so we've studied the impact of that in ontario and it's

00:03:26.860 actually not good but surprisingly it's people are worried about the social impact but the economic

00:03:33.980 impact is problematic as well the um the economic consideration is it's true that

00:03:42.300 ontario by introducing these 40 or 50 operators has now captured most of the online gambling

00:03:50.620 activity in that province but the problem is because the province only keeps 20 of that revenue

00:03:57.580 And because 80-85% of these companies are multinationals with headquarters outside of Ontario, that a good portion of this over $2.2 billion a year in online gambling revenue likely leaves the country.

00:04:14.900 So it's economic loss for the province of Ontario.

00:04:20.820 The social impact is what people are attentive to.

00:04:25.120 And we've seen, we've been bombarded with adverts from these 40 or 50 companies competing for market share.

00:04:33.900 And what that has done is increased interest and activity in online gambling, specifically online casino gambling and online sports betting.

00:04:45.920 And as a consequence of that, we've just finished a national study with Stats Canada looking at the prevalence of gambling, each type of gambling, and the prevalence of problem gambling in each province.

00:04:59.800 And as a consequence of Ontario's move, it was the rate of problem gambling went up in Ontario 0.5% and went up more than any other province.

00:05:14.220 And that represents probably 50,000, 60,000 new problem gamblers.

00:05:20.180 So there's problems both from an economic and social standpoint.

00:05:23.740 we'll start with that that you mentioned there what's happening in Ontario a little bit Angus

00:05:31.240 Reid put out a poll this week and they did a study this week on and something they found was

00:05:38.740 that 69 percent of respondents are concerned that problem or problem gamblers will increase

00:05:51.340 as sports betting becomes more and more legalized.

00:05:56.320 And 28% of respondents fear that someone they know has a sports betting addiction.

00:06:05.820 And that's 33% of people in Alberta felt that way.

00:06:10.700 And so what's your kind of reaction to that?

00:06:12.200 It really shows that there is that concern.

00:06:15.880 Well, we've got to realize the Angus poll, Angus Reid's study is online gambling.

00:06:20.720 It's also an online poll. So it's not that accurate. We've actually done a much more representative survey with Statistics Canada. And so there's some factual errors in the Angus Reid study.

00:06:33.600 You know, they claim that past year online, past year sports betting is 13%.

00:06:39.180 It's actually only 5%, but their concern that this will increase rates of problems is legitimate

00:06:48.620 because we independently found that for Ontario.

00:06:52.660 But the caveat to that is that, you know, a lot of that occurred because Canadians

00:06:59.780 and particularly Ontario residents, weren't used to all of this advertising from all these online

00:07:06.440 operators. And unfortunately, Albertans were bombarded with this as well at the same time,

00:07:13.760 even though we couldn't register on the Ontario sites. We'd have to go to the international

00:07:21.140 sites if we wanted to access those platforms. So in a way, we're somewhat inoculated or

00:07:29.180 desensitized to the advertising that being said i do expect there will be some small uptick in

00:07:38.360 problems because of the the advertising you get when you have 28 or however many

00:07:45.400 companies competing for your for your your your online activity

00:07:52.380 um i i'm curious on the advertising aspect and a large portion i've talked with uh minister

00:08:01.960 dale nally about this who's kind of heading this charge here in the with the alberta government

00:08:06.920 and one of the things he they're instituting with this is um restrictions on that advertising

00:08:12.440 that um they can't target their advertising to individuals with um problem gambling issues as

00:08:20.100 As well, though, there's restrictions on professional athletes being able to be in these advertising,

00:08:28.940 in these campaigns a little bit on that.

00:08:31.360 And now I'm curious what your reaction is to that and how effective you think that could be.

00:08:36.300 These are positive moves, but it's a bit disingenuous to say that the advertising won't target people with problems

00:08:45.580 because most of the advertising is television advertising

00:08:49.820 that everyone's exposed to.

00:08:52.160 It's good that individual advertising won't target people

00:08:55.620 who are self-excluded or have problems,

00:08:58.760 but that doesn't preclude them being exposed

00:09:00.920 to the television advertising.

00:09:04.840 In general, the research sort of indicates

00:09:06.900 there's two groups of people who are mostly affected by advertising.

00:09:13.140 One is people who've had problems with gambling,

00:09:17.700 who have remitted and are trying to control it.

00:09:21.100 And, you know, the advertising, you know, precipitates a relapse.

00:09:24.760 So it's important not to target those individuals.

00:09:27.760 And the second group of people are young people

00:09:29.800 who really haven't been exposed to the gambling world

00:09:33.600 and are, you know, having their views about it shaped by some of the advertising.

00:09:38.220 So it's quite important.

00:09:40.320 It's not the amount of advertising so much as who's doing the advertising.

00:09:44.180 So banning professional athletes or anyone who's seen as a role model by young people is a very positive move.

00:09:50.800 So that will help the younger segment for sure.

00:09:54.240 And I believe that's something that they're looking at at a federal level right now with some legislation, if I'm correct on that.

00:10:00.560 yeah um another thing that mr nally is talking about is um the self-exclusion um that's something

00:10:11.600 that he is really pushing for and saying hey this is how we're going to try and help um with those

00:10:17.440 problem gambling issues and the prevalence of it and protect these individuals is offer um self

00:10:23.040 exclusion where individuals can opt into it and they will never be able to participate in these

00:10:28.480 things again i'm curious if you've seen anything on how effective um that such resources are of

00:10:35.600 whether or not individuals who do have issues turn to them and make use of those self-exclusion

00:10:42.000 programs um self-exclusion is a useful tool and we've done across uh canada studies showing that

00:10:50.880 amongst all the different responsible gambling tools that people use is actually one of the

00:10:54.880 more effective ones that being said it's not a panacea it doesn't stop the problem the the

00:11:00.880 issue is there's 5 000 online gambling sites and there's no isp blockers that would prevent

00:11:08.320 someone who's self-excluded from you know the 28 alberta sites from going to the 4500 sites

00:11:15.920 elsewhere that being said i mean it's a useful thing um and um yeah so kudos for for doing that

00:11:26.080 and they can make it um uh they can make it um useful for uh all the sites so that once you

00:11:35.840 exclude on one site you're excluded from all the sites and you can also exclude from land-based

00:11:40.640 venues at the same time so this is a it's a useful tool is there other things you think

00:11:46.560 um they should be looking at to try and help further those efforts because you mentioned how

00:11:50.080 it's uh self-exclusive is one of the more useful things um with it or tools but it's not the end

00:11:56.160 all be all there's others that need to be done as well or can be effective one of the more useful

00:12:01.040 tools and i don't know i i know they've been talking about it at aglc but i don't know whether

00:12:07.040 it's going to be implemented or not and that is working in automatic algorithms that identify

00:12:14.720 risky play uh by you know escalation of bets or um you know persistence of play uh that predicts

00:12:24.400 you know harm and that these algorithms would automatically alert people that their play is

00:12:30.800 becoming problematic and they wish to self-exclude or take a break that's been used in other

00:12:37.280 jurisdictions around the world and that's a particularly useful tool and i'll identify

00:12:42.480 that one more than any others as potentially useful i'm curious on if you guys have found

00:12:51.360 anything i know the angus reed poll showed that i believe off the top of my head it was around 47

00:12:57.360 percent or uh something in the 40s a percent of uh wagers were placed or the biggest wager was

00:13:05.520 between one and fifty dollars it stayed under that fifty dollar mark um where necessarily it's not

00:13:11.120 they're not putting those huge big ticket um things that really can be risky um and crush

00:13:19.120 uh crush life so i'm curious if you've kind of seen on is that like is there um something where

00:13:25.840 Albertans, or not Albertans, but Canadians with iGaming are really, they're putting those risky

00:13:30.540 things as often, or are they tending to kind of stay a little more conservative with it?

00:13:35.860 Well, to be fair, I mean, this doesn't just apply to online gambling, but gambling more generally,

00:13:40.840 the large majority of gamblers are recreational gamblers. And, you know, they spend 50 bucks here,

00:13:47.900 50 bucks there, and they don't get into trouble. It's that small percentage. The actual population

00:13:54.740 prevalence of problem gambling in Canada is at historic lows, 0.6%, as we've just established

00:14:02.820 in our 2025 Statistics Canada study. But the problem is for that 0.6%, they are spending an

00:14:12.420 enormous amount of money. So the problem is that fewer Canadians are actually gambling.

00:14:18.640 of those who are being harmed are actually gambling more intensively and spending even more

00:14:25.300 than before. So it's really that small percentage that you have to be concerned about,

00:14:31.660 because that leads to bankruptcies and all sorts of financial problems, as well as mental health

00:14:37.040 and legal, potential legal problems as well. You mentioned a large portion is the recreational

00:14:47.100 entertainment side of it. One of the things when, again, you mentioned the concerns of the Angus

00:14:54.060 Reed poll and the limitations of it, but what they said was 57% of individuals who were

00:15:02.760 participating in online sports betting were doing so to make money. They were chasing money. They

00:15:09.360 weren't necessarily doing it for the recreational, from the fun perspective. Is that something you

00:15:14.300 guys are seeing an uptick in and how concerning is that the two main motivations across all types

00:15:21.760 of gambling i mean it's the same i mean people buy lottery tickets hoping to win the lottery

00:15:26.560 hoping to make money so hoping to make money and entertainment are always the two predominant

00:15:33.520 motivations for gambling i mean obviously they're unrealistic for most people and most types of

00:15:41.800 gambling. But that's not unusual, those percentages, as reported.

00:15:49.300 I want to shift to something you mentioned at the start is the economic side in Ontario,

00:15:53.980 the fact that with their strategy, a significant portion of the money is going to the third

00:16:01.200 parties. And there's a limited amount staying in Ontario and going to Ontario resources from

00:16:07.440 that perspective. AGLC has talked about, and Mr. Nali has talked about how there's already right

00:16:13.500 now a very limited amount of money staying in Alberta as it currently is, that Albertans are

00:16:20.300 going to these kind of gray area offshore online resources to place their bets rather than going

00:16:27.820 to Play Alberta, which is the only quote unquote legalized website here in Alberta. And what he

00:16:33.420 said is in legalizing it their hope is to try and catch some of that keep money here in alberta

00:16:40.780 um and so it's kind of a little bit like that um flip side of um they're hoping to keep more money

00:16:48.540 in alberta and you mentioned how the struggle albert has had in being slow to adopt um the

00:16:54.460 online policy has made them struggle to capture that market from a provincial like from the

00:17:01.900 provincial standpoint um of a like play alberta standpoint so i'm curious if you believe that in

00:17:07.900 alberta there will be a similar effect where they're going to actually end up losing more

00:17:11.980 money than they already are um the government is or if you think this could um stem to them

00:17:19.260 gaining a little more money um from it so the issue at ontario is that eye gaming

00:17:26.300 significantly increased the amount of money being spent online in Ontario. And it's true

00:17:35.060 that the Ontario government keeps 20% of that, but 80% of that now leaves the province. So

00:17:41.720 it's the Ontario government, the net to the Ontario government is increasing

00:17:48.220 because that 20% of this massively increased amount. But the amount of loss to the province,

00:17:55.720 the economy of the province of Ontario is significantly higher because 80% goes to

00:18:03.080 private operators mostly for multinationals outside the country so both are true that

00:18:09.160 there's increased provincial government capture and you know provincial coffers have gone up

00:18:16.420 somewhat but there's a loss to the Ontario economy and that's the risk here in Alberta as well

00:18:24.220 There's no doubt that the provincial government's revenues will go up.

00:18:29.760 But if it follows the pattern of Ontario, there's also no doubt there'll be losses to the Alberta economy.

00:18:38.760 And then kind of we'll wrap things up here with this final question.

00:18:42.920 Is there anything that you would like Albertans to know or Albertans should know ahead of July 13th

00:18:49.120 when we fully open Pandora's box a little bit

00:18:52.760 and really unleash the gates

00:18:54.440 for these third-party websites here in Alberta.

00:18:57.480 I wouldn't characterize it as dramatic as that.

00:18:59.960 The fact of the matter is that, I mean,

00:19:02.300 the motivation for this is the fact

00:19:04.080 that people are already gambling on these offshore sites.

00:19:09.680 And so now you're just legitimizing a subset of them.

00:19:13.560 So it's not going to be as dramatic as people think.

00:19:16.540 And again, the most dramatic thing

00:19:18.420 was the sudden increase in advertising which are already been exposed to so it's just to be to be

00:19:24.820 wary i mean the there will be some increase in problems because people um will get into this

00:19:33.460 for the first time and realizing that making money in sports bettings are is a very difficult thing

00:19:38.820 to do and that you're always going to lose money in the long run if you're playing online casino

00:19:43.860 So it's just, you know, gamble responsibly and realize that if you think that gambling is a good way of making money, you're wrong.

00:19:55.760 Thank you, Dr. Williams, for taking the time to chat with me today.

00:19:59.380 I hope that maybe we can do this again sometime.

00:20:01.120 Maybe once we get the once everything fully gets going here in Alberta and this new legislation fully comes into effect.

00:20:08.740 Happy to have any time.

00:20:10.300 Perfect. Thank you.

00:20:11.260 that's going to do it today for our interview with Dr. Williams. And again, thanks. He took

00:20:19.020 his time this morning to come and chat with me a little bit about this. It's really going to be

00:20:23.580 interesting when things get going here in Alberta on this and we start to see the results of

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00:20:39.320 putting a little bit of content out on this. I'm a former sports journalist. That's what I did

00:20:45.460 in school. That's my passion is sports. And so I imagine I'll have some stuff coming out on this

00:20:52.060 and it'll be a focus for me a little bit come July. So check that out. I'll have some content

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00:21:17.580 see all my content, as well as I'm going to have everything going on here in the Alberta government.

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Western Standard - June 08, 2026

Will legalizing third-party websites help solve Alberta's online gambling money problems？

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