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The government for the eastern Canadian province of New Brunswick is reported to be considering the possibility of following Ontario and Alberta in legalizing some forms of commercial iGaming.
René Legacy serves as the jurisdiction’s Finance Minister and told the Telegraph-Journal newspaper the administration of Premier Susan Holt is ‘exploring options’ that could include the licensing and regulation of privately-owned online gambling operators.
Situated on Canada’s eastern seaboard, New Brunswick was one of the nation’s founding provinces but is less economically powerful when compared to Ontario or neighboring Quebec. iGaming in the jurisdiction of less than 900,000 residents covers table games, online slots, and sports wagering exclusively offered by the Atlantic Lottery Corporation (ALC) via its domain at ALC.ca.
However, the Holt administration is concerned about the rapidly changing nature of Canada’s iGaming environment and the possibility New Brunswick could be losing out on millions of dollars in annual gambling revenues. The ALC currently splits all of its profits among its four constituent owners, which also includes the governments of Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland and Labrador, utilizing a proportionate sales-based model.
“Online gaming is continuously evolving and the number of options, regulated and unregulated, continues to grow,” said Legacy.
Ontario launched its stand-alone regulated commercial iGaming market in April of 2022 and last year generated approximately $2.84 billion in non-adjusted gross iGaming revenues. Alberta followed suit just in July with the province of about 5.1 million now widely expected to generate a first-year tally of some $277 million alongside around $54 million in associated taxes.
By contrast, the ALC generated iGaming net revenues of just $113 million last year and handed over roughly $110 million to New Brunswick, although this final figure additionally took into account takings from the state-run operator’s lottery and retail operations.
ALC spokesperson Greg Weston revealed commercial iGaming sites including those licensed in Ontario are each year drawing more than $178 million in revenues from punters based in Canada’s four Atlantic provinces. He went on to assert online gambling aficionados in New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland and Labrador are now seeing ‘a high volume of advertising’ from such platforms even though these ‘cannot legally operate in our region’.
The newspaper explained residents of New Brunswick searching for Ontario or Alberta-licensed sites are immediately blocked but subsequently often redirected to international domains run by the same operators, which is not illegal.
“We want our players to choose to play with the local and government-regulated option but we know our products have to stack up against the illegal offerings,” said Weston.
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