Welcoming the call to consult, and the Kentucky Derby's a difficult bet to make in Ontario
Canadian Gaming Association CEO Paul Burns says Ontario's stakeholders want to have ongoing dialogue with the regulators. And legal betting on the Run for the Roses lies solely with Woodbine.
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In this issue:
Burns on board with spirit of communication
Legal wagering in Ontario on the Derby a no-go
Join the LinkedIn Audio audience
Tallysight comes to Canada with Homestand
CGA’s Burns welcomes opportunity to consult with AGCO on advertising standards
If the president and CEO of the Canadian Gaming Association has his way, the recent call for engagement from the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario on proposed changes to advertising standards drops the proverbial puck on a commitment to constant communication between the regulator and companies with skin in the province’s sports betting and igaming . . . . er. . . game.
Monday is the deadline for submissions to the AGCO’s engagement portal on the proposal, aimed at prohibiting “the use of athletes as well as celebrities that can reasonably be expected to appeal to children and youth from internet gambling advertising and marketing in Ontario”. When the commission announced April 13 it was considering changing the standards, there was some knotting of the knickers within the industry - particularly with some ambiguous language around the use of cartoon figures, social media influencers, celebrities, entertains, etc., “who are reasonably expected to appeal to minors”.
Gaming News Canada spoke yesterday afternoon with Burns, who said CGA members, operators and other stakeholders which aren’t members are all submitting feedback to the AGCO on the proposal. The Commission has indicated it will give the industry three months to comply with the new standard once it’s released.
“This is a discussion we’re happy to have,” said Burns, who is also scheduled to join us live on LinkedIn Audio this afternoon at 2pm ET. “We want to find an evidence-based solution that works for this market, and we see this as the beginning of an ongoing dialogue.”
Burns was referring to what’s the first bump in the road for the relationship between operators and the AGCO since the Ontario market opened its doors 13 months ago.
“The AGCO has been good at consulting with the industry until this point, so there’s no reason to think that’ll change. We need to better understand the problems they want the industry to address and we’ll find solutions together.”
Responsible Gambling Council CEO Shelley White provided us last week with a statement on the AGCO’s proposal:
"The Responsible Gambling Council is pleased to see the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO) conducting a review of the internet gambling advertising and marketing standards including the impact of athlete and celebrity endorsements on youth. Gambling participation typically increases during adolescence and peaks in young adulthood when the risk for gambling harm is also amplified.
RGC believes that along with a review of the current gambling advertising standards, operator advertising should be balanced with prevention education targeted to vulnerable populations, such as youth and young adults, to raise awareness surrounding the risks of gambling and how to access support."
Even though, as Burns pointed out, gambling advertising has been around for decades in our home and native land, the angst around the sudden avalanche of sports betting ads since the Ontario government gave its blessing to a competitive market isn’t going away.
The Campaign to Ban Advertising for Gambling was launched last week by a steering committee which includes University of Toronto academics Bruce Kidd and Gretchen Kerr, former Toronto Mayor John Sewell and Greater Toronto Hockey League board member/educator/NHL hockey dad Karl Subban. The group is calling on concerned Canadians to send letters to Pablo Rodriguez, the federal Minister of Canadian Heritage and request that the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission start a public hearing “to investigate public harm resulting from the proliferation of sports gambling ads on Canadian media, as well as develop policies and regulations to mitigate the harm they cause”.
Kidd, who has been criticized for pushing back against calls from athletes, politicians and other academics for a judicial inquiry into the national sport system following a series of cases involving abuse of athletes, protection of coaches found guilty of abuses, abuses of power, and basic incompetence by some national sports bodies, appeared yesterday on CFRB’s The John Moore Show to discuss the campaign.
Dr. Antonio Mantonakis, a marketing professor at Brock University’s Goodman School of Business, told Play Canada’s Dave Briggs earlier this week that the AGCO had good reason to be concerned about young people being influenced by ads showing athletes and other celebrities. In an interview Tuesday with Gaming News Canada, Brock University sports management professor Michael Naraine said he’d like to see the gambling industry seek third parties to conduct research on the impact of advertising.
“It’s an easy fix to say no to advertising, but let’s put some actual dollars into arm’s-length research and education,” Naraine told us. “Are these ads working on GenZ and millennials. Are they appealing to youth? Clamping down on advertising is only a part of it.
“There is a responsibility to say ‘we need to do a better job to make this a sustainable market’.”
Burns said the stakeholders in Ontario are committed to getting it right.
“It’s about finding workable solutions and doing it together,” he said. “The Ontario regime has things that aren’t in other markets. We have strong language on advertising standards so that it doesn’t appeal to minors. You can’t advertise bonuses and inducements, like they do in the UK. We have a very strong KYC (know your customer) sign-up procedure. We have strong standards around assessing player risk. Operators have to undergo RG certification to make sure they’re meeting the standards.
“The AGCO acts in the public interest. They think this (issue around the use of celebrities in advertising) needs to be discussed. We’re happy to be a part of that.”
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Betting on Saturday’s Kentucky Derby a no-go in Ontario’s regulated market
We couldn’t help ourselves on this one, so here we go. The old grey market, it ain’t what it used to be. . . .
OK, enough of that. The serious point we want to make is that the sports world will turn its attention late Saturday afternoon to the 149th running of the Kentucky Derby. Here in Ontario, we’ll be able to make a hat that fits right in with the outlandish chapeaus we’ll see on the TV, tablet or cellphone screen from Churchill Downs. We’ll be able to make a mint julep from our bar or kitchen island. We’ll be able to make some noise as the expected 20-horse field, including favourite Forte, come roaring down the stretch shortly after 7 p.m. ET. We’ll be able to follow the FanDuel Sportsbook account on Twitter, and FanDuel TV’s Derby coverage (FD is also the only online sportsbook south of the border to offer betting on the race).
Here in Ontario, however, you won’t be able to make a legal bet on the first leg of the American Triple Crown.
That’s not entirely true. Customers of Woodbine Entertainment’s HPIBet.com and the Dark Horse Bets app, can place a bet on Saturday’s big race (the Toronto racetrack facility is also hosting its fourth annual Derby Day Party along with live racing Saturday). But, c’est tout. It goes back to the passing of Bill C-218 in the summer of 2021, when single-event sports betting became legal in our home and native land. Bill C-218 provided an exemption for horse racing, where operators weren’t allowed to offer fixed-odds betting on the sport of kings to protect the country’s horse racing industry which relies on the revenue from betting. In Ontario, operators which previously did business in the grey market, were forced to drop the sport from their products as regulated operators. Sports Interaction, for example, doesn’t offer horse racing to bettors in Ontario, but its grey-market customers in other provinces will be able to wager on Saturday’s race (OLG and the country’s other lottery corporations don’t offer bets on the sport).
That hasn’t sat well with bettors who play by the rules.
“I won a huge Derby bet on Pinnacle a bunch of years ago but sadly will be sitting out this year’s race," Harley Redlick emailed Gaming News Canada yesterday. “Two years ago you could bet the Derby on any grey market site in Ontario. Last year you could bet on the sites that were still grey, but not the regulated ones . . . now you can’t bet the Derby.
“Consumers aren’t being serviced properly. Nobody’s downloading the Woodbine app because they want to make a Derby wager.”
Fitzdares, which debuted as a regulated operator in Ontario around the Super Bowl in February, is heavily invested in its horse racing product. A visit to one of The Fitzdares Club locations before the ICE London conference in February had several TVs tuned into the ponies.
“Racing is our DNA, and our vision for Ontario is to be the destination for fixed-odds facebook for those who seek a premium experience,” Trista Wootton, Fitzdares’s director of growth, told us via email. “In the UK, we have an award-winning racing product with prices and streams from around the world, supported by outstanding in-app racecards.
“At the moment we’re tuned into the conversations around the potential provision of racing to Ontarians, but it seems like they’re stuck in the gates on this one. Our dream would be to offer fixed-odds racing in the province, which could potentially begin with foreign race meetings, generating a return to the horse people of Ontario.”
There were expectations that Woodbine would have had a sports betting partner by now around its bricks-and-mortars business. But that hasn’t materialized, due in some part to the curious delay by the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation to not deliver a strategy for retail casinos to incorporate sportsbooks until last October.
Listen to us on LinkedIn Audio this afternoon
For the baker’s dozen of new subscribers so far this week to our twice-weekly keyboarded correspondence (and thank you for coming on board), we gather with the most-informed people in the gambling industry every Thursday afternoon for the Gaming News Canada Show presented by Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP.
So, please consider this to be your invitation to listen, learn - and lend your voice - to the conversation on an array of topics between 2-3 p.m. ET. CGA grand poobah Paul Burns and Woodbine Entertainment Group CEO Jim Lawson will join us along with regular contributors Amanda Brewer (Kindred Group) and Kris Abbott (Betano Canada).
And if you're one of our regular listeners and missed last week’s podcast, we spent a few minutes knocking about Ryan Reynolds’ latest investment in Nuvei.
Tallysight brings its business to Canada with Homestand Sports deal
Sports gaming software company Tallysight is bringing its business north of the border.
The San Diego-based business is announcing this morning its first Canadian partnership. Tallysight will be doing the collaboration thing with Homestand Sports, providing the media brand with integrated sports betting content experiences for sports fans and also servicing gaming operators on Homestand.ca.
"We're thrilled to partner with Homestand as we expand into the Canadian sports gaming market,” said Tallysight co-founder and CEO Matt Peterson. “We're excited to collaborate with Homestand and establish a strong presence in this new market and provide content teams with the best possible platform to power their offerings.
“We believe that this partnership puts us in a strong position to also serve the other provinces which are contributing to a rapidly expanding Canadian sports gaming market.”
Since launching in 2019, Tallysight has quickly made its mark in supporting major U.S. media companies, including the New York Times/The Athletic, Vox Media, and Gannett - owners of USA Today. The company also has a commercial partnership with affiliate marketing company Catena Media, and announced Tuesday an agreement with Sportradar to deliver extensive access to picks from the sports media industry to the sports data giant.
“Our new partnership with Tallysight instantly provides us with a solution to better monetize our owned and operated digital platforms across Canada and the United States,” said Mark Silver, CEO of Homestand Sports. “Thanks to Tallysight’s affiliate licences and technology, we can now marry daily shows such as The Homestand Show and Room 4-4-2, and segments online with tools that allow our audience to responsibly participate in sports wagering.
“With Homestand also emerging as a major player in Canadian sports media, we’re excited to have a partner which is already working with major media outlets such as the New York Times and The Athletic, and is making its Canadian ‘debut’ with us.”
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