Who are the Canadian Gaming Association
The Canadian Gaming Association is a national trade association that represents leading operators and suppliers in Canada’s gaming, sports betting, eSports, and lottery industries. They have launched a series of podcasts aimed at informing and educating stakeholders in the business of legal gambling. In their first podcast, the president and CEO were joined by IPSOS’s Senior VP, Scott Morash, and Director, Trevor LeBlance, to discuss the channelization of Canada’s online gambling market in relation to surveys of Alberta, British Columbia, and Ontario populations.
The results of the survey are particularly relevant as Alberta is currently working on legislation to launch a commercial regulated market similar to that which operates in Ontario. However, like British Columbia, it already has a government-run online portal called Play Alberta. British Columbia has PlayNow. The challenge for Alberta will be to switch people away from unregulated sites to the newly regulated ones without cannibalizing its existing customer base.
Channelization is about numbers playing on regulated versus unregulated sites
In the podcast, the participants were keen to point out that channelization in the gambling market simply refers to the distinction between playing on regulated versus unregulated sites. It is not related to the amount staked, turnover, or Gross Gambling Revenue, and is simply measured as a percentage of the population. Canadians have been playing online for over two decades, and Ipsos conducted a seven-minute survey to determine where people play.
One thing of interest to note is that Canadians have a higher-than-average propensity to gamble. The survey was only looking at people who had placed a bet at a real money casino, such as those listed on Casino.ca, and not those who had played at social casinos or just played free demo versions of games.
Methodology
Conducted between February 24 and March 24, Ipsos surveyed 1,319 online gaming players in Alberta and 1,312 in BC who had placed a real money bet on any kind of online casino games or sports in the previous three months. Respondents were weighted by age (18+ in Alberta and 19+ in BC), gender, and education level. In order to participate, they had to meet the following criteria:
- They had bet on online casino games or sports online within the past three months
- They mentioned that they have played on at least one valid online gambling website or app that offers real-money bets
- Out of the valid websites/apps listed, they had gambled/wagered on at least one of those websites/apps within the past three months
What did the survey reveal
Alberta
The results showed that only 1 in 10 online gamblers in Alberta exclusively use Play Alberta, with 90% using unregulated sites for recent wagering. The poll found that while almost 23% had played on the Play Alberta site, 12% of them had used it in conjunction with other non-regulated sites.
British Columbia
The situation in British Columbia revealed that almost a quarter of those who gambled did so exclusively on the province’s PlayNow portal. It was agreed that PlayNow had better brand recognition, and the bigger uptake was almost certainly due to better advertising, communication, and the fact that the site had been around for a long time.
Ontario
However, the panel revealed that in Ontario, the figures paint a different picture, where the vast majority of iGamers play on regulated sites.
Confusion
The general feeling there was that newcomers to the market tended to play it safe and adopt the approach that, as they did not know much about the market, they wanted to play on legal sites. The problem in Alberta and BC seemed to be that people could not easily distinguish between what was regulated and what was not.
While 93% of respondents knew that Play Alberta was regulated, and 96% knew that PlayNow was, 55% of respondents who played on unregulated sites believed that the ones they were playing on were also regulated. This was because the sites were available, easy to access, and trustworthy. The survey revealed that, regardless of the market, what players want above all else is:-
- Fast withdrawals
- Secure payment options
- Bonus offers and promotions
- No fees for withdrawals
The next criteria were:-
- Good selection of games
- User-friendly websites or apps.
- Interestingly, players in BC were also keen to ensure that the provincial regulator regulated the sites on which they were playing. This was less of a requirement in Alberta, despite it now being the primary focus of regulation in Canada.
Regulation for player protection, fairness, and choice
Neither BC nor Alberta has anywhere near the channelization levels of Ontario. Alberta’s challenge will be to take a set of people who already trust the unregulated sites they are playing on and make them care about regulation.
The panel on the podcast praised the Ontario model for aiming to protect people, rather than take anything away. As people are already playing regularly on big-name sites, they will continue to want to do so. Consumer choice matters, and there was discussion around this being alive and kicking in the Ontario market
Before Ontario’s commercial regulated iGaming market opened in April 2022, it was estimated that around 70% of online gambling in the province was occurring on unregulated sites rather than the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation’s (OLG) government-run platform. However, the situation has completely turned around, and Ontario’s channelization rate is now 83.7%, according to an Ipsos-CGA study conducted in April of this year.
So while only one in ten Albertans currently gamble exclusively on the government-run platform, in Ontario, only 16.3% of iGamers gamble on unregulated websites. However, it was noted that more than one-fifth of those who played on regulated sites also claimed to have wagered on unregulated platforms.
It goes to show that, even in Ontario’s three-year-old regulated market, with eighty-six approved online gambling websites, the grey market is still alive and kicking. The Canadian Gambling Association, backed up by the data from Ipsos, argues that whether regulated or not, Canadians have been gambling online for the best part of two decades. Regulation aims to provide a level playing field that offers maximum consumer protection and minimal risk. The benefit of extra revenue for provincial coffers is not to be sniffed at either.
