Canada Market Report: Part 2

Completing our Canada report, we delve into the provinces of New Brunswick, British Columbia, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland and Labrador and Saskatchewan, including an exclusive interview with the Canadian Gaming Association’s Paul Burns, focusing on recent iGaming changes to Canada’s gaming ecosystem.

New Brunswick is one of the three Maritime provinces and one of the four Atlantic provinces and is bordered by Quebec, Nova Scotia, the US state of Maine, and the ocean. It is the only province considered officially bilingual using both French and English languages.

The New Brunswick Lotteries and Gaming Corporation was set up in 2008 and is governed by the Gaming Control Act. The gaming sectors available are VLTs, ticket lotteries, casino gaming, and online gaming. A total of $157.1M in Gaming income was received in FY2021/22 which came from VLTs with $72.3M, ticket Lottery with $41.5, and Casino Gaming with $17.8M, and ILottery $25.5M. Anticipated Revenue for 2023.24 is $165M in total.

British Columbia has regulated Gambling which is managed by the Lottery Corporation (BCLC) on behalf of the provincial government which offers slots, table games, and bingo at 34 casinos and community gaming centres, two racecourse casinos, and one commercial bingo hall.

Prince Edward Island, a land of quaint rural communities divided into three counties: Prince, Queens and Kings. The Prince Edward Island Lotteries Commission was set up in 1976 under the Lotteries Commission Act to manage the lottery schemes on behalf of the province. This is now run via the Atlantic Lottery Corporation. The gaming industry for this province is made up primarily of VLT gaming and lotteries which saw a total of $68.9m in net revenue for ALC last year.

Newfoundland & Labrador is the easternmost province in Canada in the Atlantic region and comprises the island of Newfoundland and mainland Labrador. The NL government has been fighting against gambling expansion for years. A policy was set up in 1996 to prevent any land-based casinos from opening and this continues whilst in 2005 laws were introduced to reduce the number of VLTs in the province.

PlayNow.com is the only legal online Gaming website operated by Siga and provided by BCLC, of the landlocked province bordering the US states of Montana and North Dakota, Saskatchewan. only legal online Gaming website and is operated by Siga and provided by BCLC. It was launched at the end of 2022 and offers over 500 casino games, live dealer games, and sports betting. Net proceeds are shared between Siga and Sask Gaming.

Find the full report in the G3 Magazine, June issue: https://content.yudu.com/web/1tjv7/0A1tjv8/G3Jun24/html/index.html?page=61&origin=reader