Every week, the number of licensed entities in Ontario’s digital gambling and sports betting market grows even larger. Just recently, the regulator, the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario, revealed that it has approved nine more brands to become part of the legal market. The brands are operated by leading betting companies such as Apollo Entertainment, Betsson, and Boyd Gaming.
Ontario’s market was officially launched by the province on April 4, 2022. The new iGaming model aims to intervene with Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation’s monopoly on the online gaming sector and also provide a safe and regulated space for gaming for locals. This way it would decrease the betting volume on unregulated offshore gaming sites and keep revenue for the province.
Options Grow Larger
At the end of last week, AGCO reported that nine more gaming brands have been approved to join the provincially regulated market for online gaming and sports betting. As stated, the nine digital casinos are operated by Apollo Entertainment, Betsson and Boyd Gaming-owned Pala Interactive. Allowing them to operate in the local internet market for a term of one year.
Seven of the nine licenses have gone to Apollo Entertainment, a company which is famous for offering casinos of Games Global slots. While the other two registered brands under the AGCO are owned and governed by Bettson-owned GWN Limited and Boyd-owned Pala Interactive. After getting an operating agreement from AGCO’s iGaming Ontario they will be able to go online.
According to the reports, the seven websites of Apollo Entertainment which were registered by the Ontario regulator are Zodiac.casino, Yukongold.casino, Luxury.casino, Grandmondialcasino.com, Casinoclassic.com, Captain-Cooks.casino, and Goldentiger.casino. Meanwhile, the two brands allowed to enter the market and soon debut in the province for Palo Interactive and GWN Limited are on.canplaycasino.com and Ot.betsafe.com respectively.
Q1 Results from the New Sector
After its launch in April, at the end of August, iGaming Ontario finally published the first official fiscal report from the online market. For its first three months of operations, the private market has managed to accumulate a wagering handle of over CA4 billion, but only CA$162 million in revenue. Numbers are slightly less than predicted, however, they are still impressive.
For the first quarter, the market and the operators who were online at the time, the sector had 492,000 active player accounts and an average monthly spend of CA$113. But this does not include wagered promotional bonuses. The hold for the quarter was 3.9%, which is significantly less than other regulated online markets such as New York’s Q1 of 6.63%.
Just recently, Ontario’s largest horse racing operator, Woodbine Entertainment, provides some exciting news for online bettors. The organization said that it is working towards offering bets on horse racing on the province’s online operators and it should happen before the end of the year. In order to become a reality, the group needs permission from the Canadian Pari-Mutuel Agency.
