Alberta has opened up its online gambling and sports betting market to allow in private sites and apps.
The news: Private gambling sites and apps can now operate in Alberta after changes to the Province’s regulations around iGaming came into effect today. The Alberta iGaming Corporation, which manages Alberta’s iGaming market, as well as several iGaming companies, posted online about the opening of the private market.
According to the minister in charge of Service Alberta, Dale Nally, 22 private operators are already up and running, competing with Alberta’s provincially owned PlayAlberta platform. Those operators include DraftKings, FanDuel, and TheScore Bet. More than 50 others have been licensed by the AGLC.
From the source: According to the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction (CCSA), online gambling carries a higher risk of addiction compared to traditional gambling like lotteries. The CCSA’s 2025 report found that people engaged in online gambling were 10 times more likely to exceed risk thresholds around betting and 45 times more likely to meet the criteria for problem gambling.
Following the thread: The provincial government’s decision to legalize private iGaming companies makes Alberta one of just two Canadian jurisdictions to do so. In 2022, Ontario opened its market, saying that bringing private operators under a legal framework would help ensure game integrity, data security, and anti-money laundering compliance. It estimated at the time that some 70 percent of online gaming sites in Ontario were unregulated “grey market” sites. Ontario framed regulation as a way to capture more of the money leaving the province through those websites, and better protect users. In its Alberta iGaming Strategy, the Province cited the same motivations behind its decision to open up the market.
Ontario now has 81 regulated, private iGaming sites, and has brought some $10 billion in revenues, according to iGaming Ontario, with an overwhelming majority of players now choosing regulated sites. However, there has also been a spike in gambling- and debt-related bankruptcies and a rise in gambling addiction.
Final thought: Before today, Alberta’s only legal digital gambling was available through the Alberta Gaming, Liquor, and Cannabis’s (AGLC) PlayAlberta platform. That platform saw $5.3 billion in wagers placed in 2024. Despite this, the Province estimates that only 23 to 32 percent of the market was using PlayAlberta, with the rest of Alberta’s online gamblers turning to grey markets. Alberta’s move has already upset some grey market operators, with CoolBets citing the change to iGaming regulations as the cause for its decision to pull out of Alberta altogether.
BetaKit’s Prairies reporting is funded in part by YEGAF, a not-for-profit dedicated to amplifying business stories in Alberta.
Feature image courtesy Unsplash. Photo by Niek Doup.