Is there an upside to black market gambling? While most high-level gaming industry executives would answer that question in the negative, Canadian Gaming Association (CGA) president and CEO Paul Burns has a slightly different take.
During a recent interview with GGB Magazine, pointed out that the presence of black market gaming sites actually prevented the government from having a monopoly on the market. “Because of the large unregulated iGaming market presence in Canada, no one’s had a monopoly for 25 years and that’s the reality,” he said.
Those black market sites, in Burns’ opinion are what has motivated the country to make serious progress on its first serious, and successful, igaming legislation. Thanks to its passage, Canada will have nationwide, regulated online gambling sometime in early 2026.
Burns acknowledges the challenges of a national, regulated igaming market, especially the importance of addressing issues that are impacting the nearby US market, like sweepstakes casinos and predictive markets. “There’s this whole discussion going on around sweepstakes and predictive markets in North America, [but] the next thing is already here, and there’s more coming. As a regulator, there’s no time to pause anymore,” he said.
How the individual provinces deal with those challenges will be largely up to the individual provinces. “We’re asking provinces to find their own solution. Alberta is going through a process. They’re going to learn a lot from Ontario, but they’re going to build something that ultimately works for their province and that’s what we encourage others to do,” he added.
The only Canadian province that currently offers regulated gambling is Ontario, a market that is thriving.