Each week, Canada Sports Betting recaps all the top sports betting and iGaming news in Canada and highlights upcoming events.
Our top stories this week
- CFL Week 20 Odds, Betting Preview: Vernon Adams Jr. To Shine As Lions Starter
- Betting Markets Favour Mega-Market Spectacular In World Series
Minister talks Alberta at G2E
The 2024 Global Gaming Expo (G2E) wrapped up last week in Las Vegas, and although Canada Sports Betting didn’t attend the event, we learned that Minister of Service Alberta and Red Tape Reduction Dale Nally did attend the event in an attempt to liaise with industry stakeholders on the matter of Alberta‘s planned iGaming expansion next year.
Minister Nally held a pair of roundtables at the event that were well attended by a mixture of operators, suppliers, and other industry stakeholders, according to a source. However, he refrained from providing a timeline for a specific launch of a regulated online gambling market in the province.
According to a source, some of the key discussion points included how long operators will need to come into the market (answers varied between three and six months for the most part), what operators liked (or didn’t) about the Ontario model, what they want to see in the Alberta model, the role of Alberta Gaming Liquor & Cannabis and who the regulator will be, how land-based sportsbooks will work, and how Alberta can launch with province-wide self-exclusion on Day 1, and the tax rate. Minister Nally noted that the government will determine the tax rate and that he won’t really have a say in the matter.
Nally also mentioned that there will need to be new enabling legislation introduced during the spring 2025 session of government before the market can launch. That session begins in February, so online sports bettors in the province shouldn’t expect a launch in the early months of 2025.
Nally initially wanted to get the market up and running as quickly as possible, possibly by November’s CFL Grey Cup, but that timeline has proven unrealistic given all of the administrative and legal hurdles launching such a market requires.
NorthStar Gaming fined by AGCO
NorthStar Gaming (NorthStar Bets) has been fined $30,000 by the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario for violating the regulator’s Standards as it pertains to geolocation.
The AGCO, through a third-party assessment, found that Northstarbets.ca (Ontario only) was accessible from other locations outside of Ontario, which is a violation of its Standards for Internet Gaming. The third party tested accessibility of registered gaming sites from nearby Quebec and New York State, according to the AGCO, which further citied the operator for its repeated failure to provide the Registrar with data, information, and documents requested in a timely manner as required.
“NorthStar Gaming Holdings takes regulatory compliance very seriously. We employ the most advanced technology and third-party vendors in order to maintain the integrity of our systems,” a NorthStar Gaming spokesperson told Canada Sports Betting. “We are investigating this incident with our geolocation compliance vendor to uncover the possible causes of the incident and identify any remedial steps.”
According to its website, NorthStar Gaming is partnered with GeoComply to provide its geolocation requirements for its users. GeoComply is the industry leader in the geolocation supplier realm and is partnered with many of the major iGaming providers in Ontario and across North America.
In a previous conversation with Sports Handle, GeoComply Managing Director of Gaming, Lindsay Slader, spoke about the challenges of geofencing Ontario.
”Ontario is a particularly unique geographic place to be geofenced,” Slader said. “Because it borders the American border, it’s probably the second-most populous jurisdiction that GeoComply is going to support. So after New York, it has 14 or 15 million people, that’s bigger than Pennsylvania, bigger than Michigan, bigger than New Jersey. A large portion is clustered right around the American border. Lots of bridges, tunnels, rivers, and also some land areas.
“Montreal is within very close reach [roughly 19 miles] of betting on an Ontario site. What kind of risk does that pose? When you’re thinking about how you pinpoint someone’s location, if you’re not looking at accurate location data like Wi-Fi or GPS, you’re just counting on an IP address. An IP address can easily cover 50 kilometers or more, it can easily stretch you from Montreal into Ontario, even if you may not even actually be in Ontario. There’s definitely risks to the different types, or calibres of different types, of geolocation you’ll be using.”
Northstarbets.com is available and accessible to online gamblers in other provinces outside of Ontario. However, Northstarbets.ca should only be accessible to online gamblers located within Ontario’s provincial borders.
NorthStar Gaming has the right to appeal the fines to the Licence Appeal Tribunal (LAT), an adjudicative tribunal independent of the AGCO and part of Tribunals Ontario.
IBIA, PFA complete anti-match-fixing program
The International Betting Integrity Association announced Wednesday that the Professional Footballers Association Canada has completed its anti-match-fixing education program.
That means Canadian Premier League (CPL) soccer teams and roughly 200 players were the first to benefit from a $300,000 education fund committed by IBIA’s regulated sports betting operators, including bet365, Betway, and FanDuel.
“The IBIA sports betting integrity training, in partnership with PFA Canada, was an incredibly beneficial experience for our players,” said Marco Carducci, Cavalry FC and President of PFA Canada. “Effective and easy-to-understand, it made clear what professional athletes need to know about sports betting integrity and how to report attempted corruption. We are grateful for IBIA’s support to help safeguard the integrity of the game and to protect and educate our players.”
In addition to highlighting the potential threats from sports betting related match-fixing, the program educated players on rules and sanctions, the scale and accuracy of technology enabled sports integrity monitoring, and how to report criminals and corrupters using the red button app.
Established in 2005, the IBIA is the leading global voice on integrity for the licensed betting industry. Its members share a common goal of combating betting corruption to protect the integrity of sport and of their businesses. The not-for-profit organization releases quarterly integrity reports that break down suspicious betting activity across the globe. In 2023, there was only one integrity alert flagged in Canada for a tennis match.
