8 minute read
Canada
ONTARIO: A FUTURE NORTH AMERICAN POWERHOUSE
AS THE ONTARIO MARKET WELCOMED regulated sports betting and gaming with open arms, operators and suppliers alike have been looking to solidify their presence in Canada’s most populous province
Fitzdares
The ‘luxury bookmaker’ was one of the first to be granted an iGaming Operator Registration from the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario, and has since outlined plans to bring its “slick experience and a personal touch to the regulated Canadian market”.
William Woodhams, Fitzdares CEO, said: “We are truly excited to be launching the Fitzdares experience in Ontario in the coming months.
“Receiving our AGCO licence is a landmark achievement for the business. There will be huge competition in this newly-regulated market, but we feel our more premium and customer-focused experience will be an ideal fit.
“Work is very much underway to ensure that we deliver on our promise – in style. I would like to thank the teams at both the AGCO and iGaming Ontario for supporting us with our application and preparations for launch.”
Kambi
The sports betting technology provider went live in Ontario on day one of the market’s opening, allowing it to provide its sportsbook technology and services to operator partners – including its ice hockey product and Bet Builder capability.
Sarah Robertson, SVP of Sales, stated: “Kambi is proud to be up and running, along with our partners, on day one of the regulated market opening in Ontario. Today’s launch into Canada marks another significant milestone in the growth of our company and extends our exceptional track record across North America and worldwide.
“As a Canadian native, I am particularly excited Kambi’s worldclass sportsbook, including our market-leading hockey offering and
William Woodhams, CEO at Fitzdares Sarah Robertson, SVP of Sales at Kambi
Zak Cutler, CEO of North America iGaming at Paysafe Ludovico Calvi, GLMS President
Game Parlay product, is now available in Ontario, one of the largest markets in North America, and we look forward to supporting the launch of additional partners over the coming months.”
Paysafe
Paysafe has been authorised to provide its payments services to operators in Ontario. As a result, the payments platform extended its multi-state US payment partnerships with several operators into the Ontarian market, including PointsBet and theScore Bet.
Zak Cutler, CEO of North America iGaming at Paysafe, commented: “Today’s launch of the new, expanded Ontarian igaming market marks a milestone for the North American industry and our global company, which has its origins in Canada.
“Ontario will likely rival the largest US state igaming jurisdictions when it reaches maturity, and we look forward to facilitating payments for operators and their Ontarian customers to help the market grow to its full potential.”
GLMS
In April, the Global Lottery Monitoring System was given the green light by the AGCO to act as an integrity association in Ontario.
Ludovico Calvi, GLMS President, noted: “I am delighted that GLMS has become one of the first registered integrity bodies to win approval from the AGCO. GLMS has always supported regulated, responsible, and sustainable betting market environments, as bans have often favoured the proliferation of the black market, criminal organisations, and match-fixing.
“We believe that the standards set by AGCO will create a sustainable sports betting market in Ontario and can be considered a best practice for other Canadian provinces. We are very excited to provide integrity services to our current and future members in Ontario and other provinces.” •
SHELLEY WHITE: WE CANNOT TAKE A COOKIE CUTTER APPROACH TO SAFER GAMBLING
SPEAKING AS PART OF THE
CASINOBEATS 100 CLUB, Responsible Gambling CEO Shelley White explains why the industry must avoid a one size fits all approach to safer gambling
BY CRAIG DAVIES
The necessity of building and maintaining a strong network is a familiar construct among numerous industries, and is certainly one that is not lost in the gaming community.
However, among the multitude of strategies and expert tutorials on how best to achieve such a goal, is the question of: how much do you know about your network? With this in mind, CasinoBeats spoke with Responsible Gambling Council CEO Shelley White to find out more.
“Actually my experience outside of gambling has been a bit longer than my time within the industry; this month is actually my fifth year with the Responsible Gambling Council. Prior to that, I had leadership roles in the non-profit sector, the global non-profit sector with the YMCA, the United Way and the Kidney Foundation of Canada.
“In those organisations, my role involved taking social issues and creating and bringing people together, multi-sectoral partners from the public, private, nonprofit sectors, to create systems changes and to develop policies and programmes to address root causes of issues like substance abuse, student drop-out rates, the underlying causes of renal disease and the reasons why people are not surviving this.
“I was working with a multitude of partners to create complex but
sustainable solutions to improve people’s lives but to also improve society as a whole.”
During the discussion, White dived into her role as CEO of the Responsible Gambling Council and the work that the Canadian company is doing on a global scale to develop and implement effective safer gambling standards.
“It was a friend of mine who told me about the opportunity as CEO of the Responsible Gambling Council. As we talked about it, I was initially very intrigued by the impact that responsible gambling had in the industry. I was also very interested to see that this organisation, which is based in Canada, was doing work globally in terms of working with the industry on the development and implementation of responsible gambling standards and practices.
“All of the work that I was doing before joining the Responsible Gambling Council was about evidence and collaboration with other partners. It was about developing solutions that were going to create sustainable change.
“The Responsible Gambling Council is this nimble, innovative, purpose-driven organisation that has a foundation based in evidence, research and understanding. It’s looking to find the best approach to self exclusion, for example, and then implementing that.
“But we also apply an ethno-cultural lens to our approach too. That's the value of working with partners and the value of understanding the behaviours of people who live in various parts of the world - you realise that you can't take a cookie cutter approach to developing regulations or standards in order for responsible gambling, regulations, programmes and services to be effective.
“I love the fact that RGC is such a comprehensive organisation that includes everything from research right through to public education programmes. It's a B2B and B2C organisation.”
Discussions soon turned towards the last two years and the tremendous changes that have faced the betting and gaming industry. During her five years within the space, White pointed out that there has been one constant - the pace of change.
“There have been so many changes
over the last five years. But the only thing that has been constant is the pace of change. When you look at the emergence of the pandemic and how that has affected us all globally, we’ve seen that land-based venues closed and there was a considerable shift towards online gambling.
“Through research, we did a COVID longitudinal study and what we found is there was actually a lot of alignment between mental health and addictions and someone's risk for problem gambling. Understanding that connection is extremely valuable.
“Being able to understand a player’s risk profile can inform our work going forward - we will certainly have more alignment with mental health and addiction organisations going forward.
“The other thing we found is that there are specific ethno-cultural groups and demographics that have a higher risk of problem gambling, including youth and young adults who we found were at high risk.
“We also found that individuals from the East Asian and South Asian communities had a higher risk of problem gambling well. And so wanting to ensure that we could best support those groups, we have placed greater focus on the importance of that ethno-cultural connection. That will be extremely important going forward.”
The CEO also touched upon the importance of strong, courageous and collaborative leadership, and the necessity of embracing all of those qualities
“I think that right now, at this point, it’s absolutely essential,” White explained. “These are complex, we’ve solved all of the easys problems, the opportunities and challenges that we’re facing, given the technology that’s available, the complexity in terms of demographics, the differences that exist in the different kinds of gambling channels, makes this much more complex.
“So, what is essential now in terms of tackling these complex opportunities and challenges is a collaborative approach, bringing together collectively our knowledge, our skills, our resources, our perspectives, and having holistic debates and discussion and bringing together our resources to identify the key questions that we want to address and identity the best solutions going forward. So, collaboration, this 360 degree approach, is essential.” •
