Alberta's gambling overhaul could reshape poker and public funding by 2026
As predicted in our look at the upcoming year in Canadian poker, Alberta is moving forward with a new system of iGaming that looks to bring the province out of the grey and into a regulated market system similar to Ontario. While the new legislation applies to all forms of online gaming and is largely directed at the massive new sportsbetting market that has evolved in Canada after the Ontario move, online poker players will feel the impacts of the new legislation as well.
Good Intentions?
The basic impetus for the new system seems like a good one - capture tax revenue from a growing online gaming industry for use in Alberta to improve schools, healthcare, etc. Section 3 of the new guidelines outlines many of the social responsibilities expected of new operators under the system, showing that the point of the legislation is to ensure a safer environment for Albertans to play in, while at the same time generating revenue for use elsewhere in the province.
Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis (AGLC), the regulatory body in Alberta tasked with overseeing all forms of gambling, uses a charitable model that brings local charities in for a cut of the casino pie, and those charities use the funds to provide services to the community. As directly stated on the AGLC "About gaming in Alberta" page, "Proceeds from gaming are invested back to our communities. Charitable organizations deliver their services with proceeds from paper bingo, casino table games, raffles and pull tickets."
Capturing the Online Gaming Sphere
The main issue with AGLC's charity model in the modern world is the massive growth in online gaming. While Alberta has had PlayAlberta.ca for more than 5 years, many Albertans choose grey-market offshore sites to gamble on, and that revenue is never captured by the AGLC charity model. The PlayAlberta software has never supported online poker, so poker players have been forced into the grey market just to play, while other online gamers choose the grey market due to better sign-up and play-through bonuses.
Poker Players Facing Uncertain River
How this hand plays out for poker players is still very much up in the air. The process is still pre-flop, but our hand doesn't look very strong.
While there is some attention paid to peer-to-peer games in the Standards document, specific details are directed at game integrity almost exclusively. While that's a vital topic for poker players, covering things like security, bot detection, fraud protections, etc, one area that so far has less substance is liquidity.
Offering Play Only to Albertans
One of the key requirements of the new system is that operators who apply will be required to shut down any grey market access to Alberta players before the application process, and then create software or filters that exclude non-Albertans from the clients. While that presents a minor inconvenience, with a bit more red tape and higher costs to casino and sports betting operators, for poker providers, it means a massive reduction of player liquidity in that region.
Shared Liquidity
While liquidity is an issue for all gaming operations to some degree, it can become a life-and-death situation for games like poker. The limited player pool has a huge impact on poker revenue, potentially making the overhead of offering the game too high to be worth the expected return. With just 5 million people, and fewer of those of legal gambling age (18 in Alberta), the Alberta market is very much in that danger zone.
Hope on the Legal Horizon
While not directly applicable to Alberta yet, Ontario has been undergoing a legal process that recently saw the Ontario Supreme Court confirm "the legality under Canada's Criminal Code of Ontario's proposed "pooled liquidity" model (the proposed model) for Internet gaming in Ontario." According to Osler, a leading Canadian business law firm, "The proposed model would permit players in Ontario's regulated iGaming market to participate in peer-to-peer games (such as poker or fantasy sports) with players in jurisdictions outside of Canada, and to bet on the outcomes."
There are still a lot of open questions about the process Alberta is undertaking, both in terms of specific technical and structural details, as well as more general timeline information. Most reports suggest implementation sometime in 2026, and with applications already open, that might be realistic.
With poker players' hand preflop, things look pretty dim; as it stands, poker looks to suffer significantly if the new system goes into effect as is. There's still the board to come, however, and Alberta poker players may just find that miracle legal ace on the river.
