Q&A: AGLC COO Niaz Nejad on capturing offshore market spend with the launch of PlayAlberta

Alberta’s shiny legal online gaming site went live on October 1, offering residents of the province a suite of digital slots, table games and instant-win tickets. However, the plan is to eventually broaden the offering to live dealer games, sports betting, lottery integration, bingo, and poker to help PlayAlberta.ca compete on an equal footing with the entrenched offshore market.

Indeed, the product from Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis (AGLC), which is powered by NeoPollard Interactive, is projected to bring in C$150m in revenue for the province’s coffers over the next five years. But as AGLC COO Niaz Nejad explains, this won’t come at the expense of robust and effective responsible gambling efforts.

EGR NA: PlayAlberta went live at the start of the month, but what does the product offer Albertans looking for gaming entertainment online?

Niaz Nejad (NN): Our vision was to provide Albertans with the province’s only legal, safe and regulated online gambling site. So, our site offers players an age-gated and geofenced solution designed specifically for Albertans. You can be a Canadian citizen, but you have to be in the province of Alberta to actually play, and specifically part of our vision was to incorporate AGLC’s proven and successful GameSense social responsibility tools.

Our site offers world-class gaming products including best-in-class slots, virtual table games, and instant-scratch tickets. Eventually, the site will contain live dealer table games, a sportsbook offering, and full lottery integration, with plans to later add poker and bingo. So, PlayAlberta is a site that Albertans can feel confident about depositing and withdrawing their funds securely. And we want to make sure that online gambling revenue stays in Alberta – our goal is to capture a significant portion of the unregulated online gambling market in the province.

EGR NA: The Canadian Gaming Association estimates $4bn is bet by Canadians with offshore gambling sites every year, but how big is the problem in Alberta?

 NN: In a survey we did back in 2016 based on individual self-reporting with those who gambled offshore, we estimated about C$355m. When we redid the survey in 2020, it was estimated to be more than C$378m being gambled annually just by Albertans on the offshore market. So obviously we want to repatriate some of that money to stay in the province and benefit the province.

EGR NA: What sort of revenue do you expect PlayAlberta.ca to achieve?

NN: For AGLC’s fiscal 2021 we expect PlayAlberta.ca to generate C$3.74m in revenue. And then over the next five years we anticipate PlayAlberta.ca will bring in about C$150m.

PlayAlberta launched on October 1

EGR NA: Why did AGLC choose NeoPollard Interactive?

 NN: We went through an extensive Request for Proposal, and so AGLC had been working on launching an online gambling platform for a number of years. The start of PlayAlberta.ca actually came when we did a Request for Proposal in December 2018 and culminated in March 2020 when NeoPollard Interactive was selected. NeoPollard is, in our opinion, from an online gambling and ilottery company, definitely world class. So, we’re very proud to be partnering with them and having them offer PlayAlberta.ca for us.

EGR NA: Why has it taken until 2020 for AGLC to launch this kind of product?

NN: There wasn’t a reason specifically, other than we had been working on launching this online gambling platform for a number of years. Even pre-2018, when we did the Request for Proposal, we had been doing a lot of surveys and a lot of discussions with other Canadian jurisdictional partners in other provinces that had an online gambling offer. We were also watching what was going on in [other parts of] the world. So, it was something that we absolutely wanted to get into, and we were at the point where we were able to launch on October 1, 2020.

EGR: It is still early days but how has the site performed so far?  

NN: You’re right, it’s very early days but we’re very pleased with what we’re seeing so far, and we’ve received some phenomenal feedback from players. We have a very secure age verification because we want to make sure that you’re over the age of 18 to play on the site, and there’s been some feedback on how we’ve communicated what exactly is happening in the background.

So, to verify, identify and age users, they have to provide some basic personal information. What we do is securely check it against the credit database in Canada to validate that they’re over the age of 18. There was a bit of a misunderstanding that we were doing a credit check on them and so, based on that feedback from players, we’re making changes to help to understand that we are not doing a credit check; we’re just doing a verification that you are an adult and able to access our site.

EGR NA: How important is RG to PlayAlberta.ca?

NN: We use a best-in-class GameSense responsible gambling program, so we include deposit limits and reality checks which let players know how long they’ve been gambling. A lot of the offshore sites don’t offer any, or very minimal, responsible gambling features. We’re also extending Alberta’s self-exclusion program for AGLC to the website and what that means is it allows players to voluntarily exclude themselves from gambling activities for a period of their choosing, anywhere between six months and three years.

So, we feel that our site is strong, secure, and you know where your money is going. You know that you have extensive responsible gambling features and we hope to repatriate some of the dollars that are leaving Alberta to offshore sites to come back and stay in the province to benefit our programs here.

PlayAlberta includes blackjack

EGR NA: Is cannibalization of land-based gaming a concern in Alberta?

NN: In all the other Canadian provinces that offer online gambling, and only Saskatchewan does not have a solution, evidence shows that the online gambling platforms do not eat into the revenue of land-based casinos. There’s no cannibalization. So, with PlayAlberta.ca, AGLC is courting the players who access the unregulated markets – not the existing customers of land-based casino and racing entertainment centers; they’re very different demographics. We’ve not seen any evidence of cannibalization in land-based casinos in Canada, and certainly haven’t seen it in New Jersey so we don’t anticipate that to be the case in Alberta either.

EGR NA: The website says that sports betting is “coming soon.” How much are you hoping Bill C-218, which would amend the Criminal Code to allow provinces to give the go-ahead for single-event sports wagering, passes?

NN: Alberta is carefully watching how Bill C-218 unfolds in the Canadian parliament. In Canada, single-event wagering falls under the purview of the federal government and a change to the Criminal Code is required, but this is a move that AGLC would support. From a Canada versus US perspective, Canada has actually been in the online business way earlier than the US ever considered getting into it and one of our provinces, British Columbia, has had an online gambling platform for 10 years. It’s nice to see what’s going on south of the border, and what’s happening, especially following PASPA’s repeal, will hopefully help us with single-event wagering up in Canada, so we’re watching that very closely.