Advocating for Ontario’s iGaming and Sports Betting Market

The Canadian Gaming Association (CGA) continues to help both the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO) and iGaming Ontario (iGO) as it finalizes material for market open.

In the past several weeks we have provided feedback to iGO on the need for an adjusted GGR rate for sports betting as well as on the recent AML documents; and advocated with government alongside the Betting and Gaming Council for the need to allow international liquidity.

Final Operating Agreement and Letter of Agreement
On November 1, iGO released a handful materials to help operators prepare for the new Ontario iGaming market:

• The final draft Operating Agreement and a summary of key changes
• A Letter of Agreement (LoA) that, once executed, will enable operators to work with iGO to begin the necessary systems integration processes ahead of executing the final Operating Agreement
• A new iGOConnect page that lists the iGaming Ontario policies that will form part of the final Operating Agreement

Update on Timing of Go-Live
To ensure sufficient market readiness by a wide variety of operators and suppliers, the market will not launch in December as previously planned. We anticipate that the Province will make an announcement on November 4, 2021, during the Fall Economic Statement. We will update you as soon as it happens.

AML Workshops
Specific to the AML workshops, we reached out to iGO and we expect to know more in the next couple of weeks about the specific approach and dates.

Notification Matrix
The AGCO released a notification matrix to better inform operators about specific situations in which operators and gaming-related suppliers must proactively notify the AGCO.

AGCO and iGO Roles
The AGCO also released an infographic to better describe the roles and responsibilities at the two agencies.