Tom Mungham to retire; CGA to mark Ontario market's one-year anniversary

Wanted by the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario: a new registrar and chief executive officer.

AGCO chair of the board Lalit Aggarwall announced last Thursday that Tom Mungham will retire this fall, and the commission will begin searching immediately for his successor with the assistance of an executive search firm/headhunter. Mungham will move on to the next?chapter of his life after 33 years of public service with the Ministry of Correctional Services, the Office of the Solicitor General, the Ontario Provincial Police, and since 2006, with the AGCO.

In a blog post on the AGCO website, Aggarwal lauded Mungham’s leadership during a period of expanded mandates and modernization initiatives in the sectors the commission oversees, including the expansion of land-based casinos and the Ontario Racing Commission’s merger with the AGCO. And, of course, leading the creation of the province’s new sports betting and online gaming industry which went live almost?a year ago (more about the upcoming anniversary below).

“Most recently, Tom oversaw the development and regulatory oversight of Ontario’s new online gaming market – a regulatory framework that earned international recognition, receiving the International Associaton of Gaming Regulators’ Regulatory Excellence Award in 2022,” wrote Aggarwal. “On behalf of the Board and staff, I want to thank Tom for his tremendous contributions throughout his 17-year career at the AGCO, and most importantly, for his exceptional leadership as our Registrar and CEO.”

We’ve put out a request to the AGCO’s crack communications team for Mungham to join us Thursday on the Gaming News Canada Show.

CGA to mark one-year anniversary of Ontario’s regulated gambling market

If you’re going to be in the city below Vaughan on April 4th, and share an esprit de celebration around the one-year anniversary of the regulated, open gambling industry in Ontari-ari-ari-o, do we have a venue for you.

The Toronto Board of Trade offices, overlooking Lake Ontario, will be the site for a one-day gathering hosted by the Canadian Gaming Association to turn the calendar on the first year of the province’s ultra-competitive sports betting and online gaming market (please click here to register). The agenda du jour, as scheduled, includes:

·?????Opening remarks, including some looking back and looking ahead, from iGaming Ontario executive director Martha Otton;

·?????A panel moderated by Responsible Gambling Council CEO Shelley White on Using Technology to Set New Standards for Fair and Responsible Gambling;

·?????ThinkTV president/CEO Catherine MacLeod will steer the conversation around advertising as a shared responsibility in promoting sports betting;

·?????A panel on guiding and educating customers in Ontario;

·?????Deloitte’s Jeff Harris holding the moderator’s mic for a keynote session featuring Ontario industry leaders on Annee Numero Un.

Doug Downey, the province’s Attorney General, is on the docket to speak at the end of the day. Your humble correspondent will be on hand to chronicle the highlights in the April 6 edition of GNC.

Put the panic button on Pause re: Silicon Valley Bank mess

Having spent some 48 hours or so in The Big Apple last week around owners, employees and investors in the sports betting, gaming and sports tech industry, our Spidey sense tingled more than usual when news broke Friday of the Silicon Valley Bank folding like a 1970s polyester suit.

The raised eyebrows and perspiring foreheads accompanying said news received some relief over the weekend when U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said SVB’s customers would be protected (Craig Lord reported for Global News on the fallout in Canada to the bank’s collapse).

There was panic - and some finger-pointing - across the U.S. technology industry, and it’s safe to assume that startups and other companies in the business of sports betting and gaming did some fingernail chewing of their own. The swift reaction from the U.S. Treasury over the weekend seems to have calmed the storm.

“At this point, it appears that the immediate impact of the collapse of SVB on the gambling industry will be relatively muted,” Chris Grove, co-founding partner of Acies Investments, and operating advisor for Arctos Sports Partners, told Gaming News Canada via email yesterday. “The bank wasn't that involved in the gambling sector, and swift action by the federal government has likely mitigated any direct sector-wide concerns. But that could change quickly if we see additional bank failures, especially among banks that are more intertwined with the gambling ecosystem.”

Grove pointed out, however, that there will be some repercussions when it comes to new businesses finding new money.

“An already challenging environment for gambling startups has definitely become even more so in the wake of the SVB failure. At a minimum, we'll see more caution and foot-dragging from funders. At a maximum, funding could grind to a halt for the near-to-medium term.”

Lloyd Danzig of Sharp Alpha Advisors told Scott Longley and Jake Pollard at Earnings+More that the weekend was one of the “hectic” sort for startup founders with ties to SVB.

“They spent the last 48 hours on calls with investors, vendors and employees seeking solutions for making payroll and keeping the lights on until the liquidity situation is resolved,” said Danzig, adding that historically it hasn’t been easy for gambling businesses to get new bank accounts (we wrote about this last week with regards to operators’ frustration with iGaming Ontario over invoices they hadn’t seen coming tied to banking charges).?

We’rrrrrrrrr baaacckkkk (on LinkedIn Audio), and. . .

The Gaming News Canada Show returns Thursday afternoon (2 p.m. ET first cliché drop). Please join us on LinkedIn Audio along with regular contributors Amanda Brewer, Will Hill, Kris Abbott, Mark Silver, Gavin Roth and Mike Day for a roundup of the iGaming Next, SBJ Tech Week and New Horizons in Reponsible Gambling get-togethers along with the latest in the gambling biz. We’ll have a mention or three about March Madness, too.

In Thursday’s written edition of GNC, we’ll have more from last week’s iGaming Next NYC23 conference, including the tres bon mots of a panel discussion among sports betting executives from the NBA, NFL and MLB, some March Madness wagering talk, the slow walk for legal online gaming across the U.S. of A, and highlights from the opening of Massachusetts' legal online sports wagering market. We’ll also have the latest from People on the Move and the employment opportunities across the gambling biz in the Classified (Jobs) Information section.

The Company Line – Betty

This week we put The Company Line spotlight on Betty (Full Disclosure: Like Archie, we were more enamoured with Veronica during our teenage years). Anyhow . . . . we give TCL TLC this week to the latest arrival in the regulated Ontario marketplace.

Birthdate:?2022

Home Base:?New York, New York

Founders:?The company was co-founded by current CEO Justin Park, Vlad Pavlov, Chavdar Dimitrov, Annie Z. and Jordan T.

Raison D’Etre:?Betty is a newcomer in providing real money online casino and casual mobile gaming to its customers. As its handle suggest, the company’s strategy includes making online gaming more inclusive.

If you’d like to have your business featured in The Company Line,?please drop us an email ([email protected]).

Follow us?@GamingNewsCA?on Twitter for the latest news on the sports betting and gaming industry. For our daily picks and other sports video content, visit?@Homestand. If you’d like to appear on our Thursday afternoon get-together at LinkedIn Audio, please let us know.

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