There is good factor to think that Alberta will be a genuine moneymaker for the online gambling market.

It might even be a near billion-dollar market. Someday, maybe.

- Alberta is preparing to introduce a managed iGaming market, which would make it Canada's second province after Ontario to enable private online sportsbook and casino operators.

- Comparisons to Ontario's multibillion-dollar market and information from the Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis Commission recommend Alberta's overall online gaming earnings could be in the numerous millions annually.

- The Alberta iGaming market will include preexisting operators and those that have yet to release online sports wagering and iCasino in the province.

First, though, that market needs to open.

Alberta has been working for years on a competitive, regulated framework for online sports betting and internet-based gambling establishment games. The plan for the new Alberta sports betting and iGaming market is to invite, license, and control private-sector operators, which will hand over a bit more than 20% of their earnings to the province in return.

And when Alberta's iGaming market launches, which some companies now expect to take place in the late spring or early summertime, it will bring the variety of provincially controlled online betting alternatives for homeowners from one, Play Alberta, to several. It will likewise make Alberta the 2nd province in Canada to authorize private-sector iGaming competitors, after Ontario introduced a comparable market in 2022.

Alberta's de facto iGaming minister, Dale Nally, has stated the provincial federal government doesn't see this as a "money grab" but rather as a method to provide more consumer protection. Still, some cash will be grabbed, consisting of to support responsible gaming programs and the province's First Nations.

"Once the controlled market is established, Alberta's federal government will have the ability to record gambling earnings presently 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 obligation efforts and other federal government top priorities."

In the grand plan of things, Alberta's launch this year will be a fairly big offer for the world of legalized sports betting and online gambling establishment gaming.

It appears not likely that there will be a flurry of state-level launches in the U.S. in 2026 (Maine might be one, at least), especially with federally controlled prediction markets making complex things with their across the country kind of de facto sports betting.

That leaves Alberta as a source of certainty for major gaming operators. DraftKings, for instance, is budgeting for a launch of online sports betting and iCasino in the province later on this year.

Super Group, Betway's parent company, has baked into its 2026 quotes a Q2 launch of online sports betting 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 priority for the online gaming industry even if it were just one of many brand-new jurisdictions set to introduce. The province has the potential to produce a lot of iGaming earnings for both private 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 be worth?

To begin, there is currently a province in Canada running the exact same sort of iGaming market that Alberta intends to launch: Ontario. The figures reported by Ontario's iGaming agency recommend severe potential in Alberta too.

Ontario launched its competitive iGaming market in April 2022, and there are now around 50 operators and more than 80 sites offering online sports betting, iCasino, poker, and bingo.

In January, more than $9.5 billion was wagered utilizing those websites, creating more than $400 million in revenue for operators and the province, which keeps around 20% of receipts. The very first year of Ontario's new iGaming market saw around $35.6 billion bet and around $1.4 billion in overall gaming earnings produced.

(Quick aside: We're mainly speaking about earnings in this short article, not total betting or "deal with." As the Ontario numbers show, the total amount bet in the province, and in Alberta, will frequently be in the billions. However, some of those bets will be won. The profits mentioned here is what's left over after paying those winners.)

Some juicy stats

Data offered to Covers by Juice Reel, an app sports wagerers can utilize to track their plays which provides analytics and the ability to tail other wagerers, recommends similarities between Alberta and Ontario wagerers.

Juice Reel said the typical bet size for Alberta-based users was $32, and the average monthly manage for January was $5,151. Albertans were also utilizing, on average, 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 handle was $8,679. The average number of books utilized was 2.17, and the parlay percentage was 41%. The typical bet size in both jurisdictions was $10.

There are some cautions to the above worth noting. For starters, this is based upon bets tracked utilizing Juice Reel. Moreover, anybody utilizing a bet-tracking app like Juice Reel is probably a notch or 2 above the most leisure of gamblers.

Juice Reel's data likewise includes offshore and provincially regulated books, along with day-to-day dream sites. However, not each and every single book that Alberta and Ontario gamblers might be utilizing is recorded in the numbers.

DraftKings feels quite particular that the launch of its online sportsbook/casino in Alberta is "around the corner," and is forecasting its financials accordingly: https://t.co/1R5ZCywuHk @Covers

Still, Juice Reel kept in mind the data recommends resemblances in between Alberta and Ontario. However, the former has yet to carry out an Ontario-like iGaming design and license some of the operators present just in Ontario at the minute.

Ontario is likewise Canada's most populous province, with a population of around 16 million. It's not likely Alberta and its roughly five-million-strong populace will produce the very same numbers. Still, just the rough population math alone hints that Alberta might be worth around a 3rd of what Ontario is doing. That would suggest around $460 million in iGaming-related profits in Year 1.

That would be simply to begin. There is evidence that the average Albertan could out-gamble the typical Ontarian also.

Anecdotally, you could point to Albertans' extreme love affair with the Edmonton Oilers' "50/50" raffle, which has raised hundreds of millions of dollars for charity. You could also point to research by Statistics Canada showing the average annual salary in Alberta is roughly $30,000 higher than in Ontario.

It's worth noting, too, that Ontario's iGaming income has actually continued to grow because its launch. While around $1.4 billion in overall video gaming revenue was produced in Year 1, more than $4 billion was generated in 2025, according to figures from iGaming Ontario.

How Alberta's presently playing

Furthermore, there are financials you could parse from Alberta's only authorized iGaming operator at the moment. Those might be used to attempt to predict the general size of the province's online gambling market.

The Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis Commission (AGLC) reported in its newest annual report that its online gambling net sales (or net income) for the year ending March 31, 2025, were almost $270 million, up $35 million from the previous .

That earnings streamed from "5 distinct video gaming experiences" provided through the AGLC's Play Alberta platform: casino, "instant" games, live dealership video games, lotto, and online sports wagering.

The bulk of Play Alberta's online gaming earnings comes from money wagerers lose playing casino-style video games, which accounted for 73.1% of net sales for the most just recently reported year, or $197.3 million. Sports betting, meanwhile, generated the least for Play Alberta of all of its verticals, producing simply shy of $8 million in net sales, or 3% of the total.

This, however, only records part of the existing market for online betting in Alberta. It's estimated that the bulk of internet-based betting happens with companies that may be controlled abroad or outside the province, but not by the province itself.

This so-called "grey" or "black" market is making the lion's share of company from Alberta's online bettors. The robust and "uncontrolled" market is arguably the chief reason Alberta is introducing a controlled iGaming market in the very first place - to try to record that activity.

"Unregulated online gambling is currently extensively readily available across the province, with some providers running with limited or no gamer protection or social duty procedures," the provincial government says. "Based on current survey information, uncontrolled operators are estimated to catch roughly 70% of Alberta's total iGaming market."

This suggests Play Alberta accounts for around 30% of iGaming-related profits being generated in the province. That would also suggest the general size of Alberta's online betting market is somewhere in the ballpark of $900 million in annual earnings.

It's a pretty loose price quote, and an old one, as the most current AGLC figures only go to March 31, 2025. However, if the $270 million in Play Alberta-related net sales is simply 30% of the overall addressable market, that implies another $630 million is being earned in other places.

(The Alberta government stated just recently that Play Alberta generated $275 million in net sales over the past year, and that the platform is approximated to record just around 23% to 32% of the province's overall 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 lot of estimating, forecasting, and extrapolating, but it's not far off from the "B" word: "billion."

Other data recommends much more upside for Alberta.

A 2024 study performed by research firm H2 Gambling Capital on behalf of the International Betting Integrity Association suggested there could be numerous millions of dollars in "unregulated" online sports betting revenue in Alberta. That revenue could be funnelled into Alberta's regulated market.

"If (an Ontario-like iGaming) design was presented from the start of 2025, that could bring around $400m in taxable sports betting (gross video gaming earnings) back onshore during 2025-28 on present overseas market forecasts," the report stated. "However, a regulated industrial market would also be anticipated to grow the total market and the true taxable GGR capacity is for that reason anticipated to be higher."

Alberta's forthcoming iGaming market might ultimately produce more than US$ 700M a year in profits, according to Citizens JMP Securities expert Jordan Bender.

"If $700M of video gaming earnings is fulfilled, it would represent the eighth-largest gaming market in North America." pic.twitter.com/E6IJX9DASe

This extra income for the regulated market would be simply connected to online sports betting. It does not even include iCasino, which the Play Alberta figures recommend would make up the majority of iGaming earnings. Play Alberta's online sportsbook is just providing a low single-digit share of its profits too.

So, there is possibly even more space to grow. And it's here that we begin drawing nearer to the billion-dollar mark again.

Another 2024 study, done by experts at investment bank Citizens, projection Alberta's iGaming market might become worth more than US$ 700 million in income a year.

That US$ 700 million would work out to around $950 million in Canadian currency. This would make it similar in size to Arizona's sports wagering market, which produced $713.8 million in gross revenue in 2015.