Is Alberta a Billion-Dollar Sports Betting and IGaming Market?

There is excellent reason to think that Alberta will be a genuine moneymaker for the online gaming industry.
It might even be a near billion-dollar market. Someday, possibly.
– Alberta is preparing to release a regulated iGaming market, which would make it Canada’s second province after Ontario to enable private online sportsbook and gambling establishment operators.
– Comparisons to Ontario’s multibillion-dollar market and information from the Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis Commission recommend Alberta’s overall online gambling profits could be in the numerous millions annually.
– The Alberta iGaming market will consist of preexisting operators and those that have yet to launch online sports wagering and iCasino in the province.
First, however, that market needs to open.
Alberta has been working for years on a competitive, regulated framework for online sports wagering and internet-based casino games. The prepare for the brand-new Alberta sports wagering and iGaming market is to invite, license, and regulate private-sector operators, which will hand over a bit more than 20% of their profits to the province in return.
And when Alberta’s iGaming market launches, which some companies now expect to occur in the late spring or early summer season, it will bring the variety of provincially regulated online gaming alternatives for homeowners from one, Play Alberta, to multiple. It will likewise make Alberta the second province in Canada to license private-sector iGaming competitors, after Ontario introduced a comparable market in 2022.
Alberta’s de facto iGaming minister, Dale Nally, has said the provincial government doesn’t see this as a “cash grab” however rather as a way to offer more customer defense. Still, some cash will be grabbed, consisting of to support accountable betting programs and the province’s First Nations.
“Once the regulated market is developed, Alberta’s government will be able to catch betting earnings currently lost to uncontrolled sites frequently situated outside of Alberta,” Nally said last year. “This brand-new profits can be utilized to support First Nations in addition to social duty initiatives and other federal government priorities.”
In the grand scheme of things, Alberta’s launch this year will be a relatively huge offer for the world of legalized sports betting and online casino gambling.
It appears unlikely that there will be a flurry of state-level launches in the U.S. in 2026 (Maine might be one, a minimum of), especially with federally controlled forecast markets complicating things with their nationwide type of de facto sports wagering.
That leaves Alberta as a source of certainty for significant betting operators. DraftKings, for example, is budgeting for a launch of online sports wagering and iCasino in the province later this year.
Super Group, Betway’s moms and dad company, has baked into its 2026 price quotes a Q2 launch of online sports wagering and iCasino in Alberta’s yet-to-launch regulated iGaming market. pic.twitter.com/TlAypxbsDe
Nevertheless, there are numbers that recommend Alberta would be a concern for the online betting market even if it were just among lots of new jurisdictions set to release. The province has the prospective to generate a lot of iGaming profits for both personal operators and the province. That’s why brand names like DraftKings, Betway, and BetRivers are lining up to join its regulated market.
So how much would Alberta really deserve?
To begin, there is already a province in Canada running the exact same sort of iGaming market that Alberta aims to launch: Ontario. The figures reported by Ontario’s iGaming agency recommend severe capacity in Alberta as well.
Ontario introduced its competitive iGaming market in April 2022, and there are now around 50 operators and more than 80 sites using online sports wagering, iCasino, poker, and bingo.
In January, more than $9.5 billion was wagered using those websites, creating more than $400 million in profits for operators and the province, which keeps around 20% of invoices. The first year of Ontario’s brand-new iGaming market saw around $35.6 billion wagered and roughly $1.4 billion in overall video gaming profits produced.
(Quick aside: We’re mainly talking about earnings in this article, not overall betting or “manage.” As the Ontario numbers indicate, the overall amount bet in the province, and in Alberta, will routinely be in the billions. However, a few of those bets will be won. The earnings mentioned here is what’s left over after paying those winners.)
Some juicy stats
Data provided to Covers by Juice Reel, an app sports gamblers can use to track their plays which uses analytics and the capability to tail other gamblers, suggests resemblances between Alberta and Ontario bettors.
Juice Reel said the average bet size for Alberta-based users was $32, and the typical month-to-month deal with for January was $5,151. Albertans were likewise using, typically, 1.3 online sportsbooks, and 37% of their bets were parlays.
To compare, the average bet size for Juice Reel’s Ontario-based users was $34, and the typical regular monthly deal with was $8,679. The average variety of books used was 2.17, and the parlay portion was 41%. The mean bet size in both jurisdictions was $10.
There are some caveats to the above worth keeping in mind. For starters, this is based upon bets tracked using Juice Reel. Moreover, anybody using a bet-tracking app like Juice Reel is probably a notch or 2 above the most recreational of wagerers.
Juice Reel’s data also includes offshore and provincially managed books, along with everyday fantasy sites. However, not every book that Alberta and Ontario gamblers may be utilizing is captured in the numbers.
DraftKings feels quite specific that the launch of its online sportsbook/casino in Alberta is “around the corner,” and is forecasting its financials appropriately: https://t.co/1R5ZCywuHk @Covers
Still, Juice Reel noted the information suggests resemblances in between Alberta and Ontario. However, the former has yet to execute an Ontario-like iGaming model and license a few of the operators provide just in Ontario at the minute.
Ontario is also Canada’s most populous province, with a population of around 16 million. It’s not likely Alberta and its around five-million-strong people will produce the exact same numbers. Still, just the rough population mathematics alone hints that Alberta might be worth around a 3rd of what is doing. That would suggest around $460 million in iGaming-related earnings in Year 1.
That would be simply to start. There is proof that the typical Albertan could out-gamble the typical Ontarian as well.
Anecdotally, you could indicate Albertans’ intense love affair with the Edmonton Oilers’ “50/50” raffle, which has raised hundreds of countless dollars for charity. You might also point to research by Statistics Canada showing the average annual salary in Alberta is approximately $30,000 higher than in Ontario.
It’s worth noting, too, that Ontario’s iGaming income has actually continued to grow since its launch. While approximately $1.4 billion in total gaming income was produced in Year 1, more than $4 billion was produced in 2025, according to figures from iGaming Ontario.
How Alberta’s presently playing
Furthermore, there are financials you might parse from Alberta’s only authorized iGaming operator at the minute. Those might be utilized to attempt to forecast the general size of the province’s online gaming market.
The Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis Commission (AGLC) reported in its latest yearly report that its online gambling net sales (or net profits) for the year ending March 31, 2025, were nearly $270 million, up $35 million from the previous .
That earnings streamed from “5 unique gaming experiences” used through the AGLC’s Play Alberta platform: gambling establishment, “immediate” video games, live dealer games, lotto, and online sports wagering.
The bulk of Play Alberta’s online betting revenue comes from money gamblers lose playing casino-style games, which accounted for 73.1% of net sales for the most just recently reported year, or $197.3 million. Sports betting, meanwhile, created the least for Play Alberta of all of its verticals, producing simply shy of $8 million in net sales, or 3% of the overall.
This, nevertheless, only catches part of the existing market for online gambling in Alberta. It’s approximated that the bulk of internet-based wagering takes place with companies that may be managed abroad or outside the province, however not by the province itself.
This so-called “grey” or “black” market is earning the lion’s share of company from Alberta’s online gamblers. The robust and “uncontrolled” market is perhaps the chief factor Alberta is releasing a regulated iGaming market in the very first location – to try to capture that activity.
“Unregulated online gambling is already extensively available throughout the province, with some companies running with restricted or no player defense or social duty procedures,” the provincial federal government states. “Based upon current survey data, uncontrolled operators are estimated to catch roughly 70% of Alberta’s overall iGaming market.”
This recommends Play Alberta accounts for around 30% of iGaming-related revenue being produced in the province. That would likewise recommend the general size of Alberta’s online gambling market is somewhere in the ballpark of $900 million in annual income.
It’s a pretty loose price quote, and an old one, as the most current AGLC figures just go to March 31, 2025. However, if the $270 million in Play Alberta-related net sales is just 30% of the total addressable market, that indicates another $630 million is being earned in other places.
(The Alberta government said recently that Play Alberta created $275 million in net sales over the previous year, and that the platform is approximated to catch just around 23% to 32% of the province’s total iGaming market. But, for the purposes of this estimate-heavy story, we’re playing things on the conservative side.)
Guesstimation time
Again, this is a great deal of estimating, forecasting, and theorizing, however it’s not far off from the “B” word: “billion.”
Other data suggests even more upside for Alberta.
A 2024 study performed by research company H2 Gambling Capital on behalf of the International Betting Integrity Association showed there could be hundreds of millions of dollars in “uncontrolled” online sports wagering profits in Alberta. That profits might be funnelled into Alberta’s regulated market.
“If (an Ontario-like iGaming) model was presented from the start of 2025, that might bring around $400m in taxable sports betting (gross gaming revenue) back onshore throughout 2025-28 on current overseas market projections,” the report said. “However, a regulated commercial market would also be anticipated to grow the overall market and the real taxable GGR capacity is for that reason anticipated to be higher.”
Alberta’s forthcoming iGaming market could eventually generate more than US$ 700M a year in revenue, according to Citizens JMP Securities expert Jordan Bender.
“If $700M of gaming earnings is satisfied, it would represent the eighth-largest video gaming market in North America.” pic.twitter.com/E6IJX9DASe
This additional revenue for the regulated market would be purely connected to online sports betting. It does not even include iCasino, which the Play Alberta figures recommend would make up most of iGaming earnings. Play Alberta’s online sportsbook is just offering a low single-digit share of its revenue as well.
So, there is potentially much more space to grow. And it’s here that we start drawing nearer to the billion-dollar mark once again.
Another 2024 study, done by experts at financial investment bank Citizens, projection Alberta’s iGaming market could become worth more than US$ 700 million in profits a year.
That US$ 700 million would exercise to around $950 million in Canadian currency. This would make it similar in size to Arizona’s sports betting market, which produced $713.8 million in gross earnings in 2015.