The unanimous April 19 Vancouver city council rejection of Paragon Gaming’s bid to build a mega-casino beside BC Place Stadium halted land-based gambling expansion.
Meanwhile, delegates of the Canadian Gaming Summit at the Vancouver Convention Centre heard their future is not in slot machines or on tables.
The next wave for North America is legalized online sports gambling, first in casinos and then on smart phones and tablet computers. It’s already the key driver of mainstream gambling in Europe, but it will require a key change to the Criminal Code of Canada and evolution south of the border for governments to maximize profit.
Sports gambling is allowed in Nevada, and online gambling remains illegal in the United States, but several jurisdictions are exploring ways and means to legalize and tax proceeds to stem the flow to foreign operators.
The best estimate for online gambling’s global value, according to Robert Scarpelli of Toronto’s HLT Advisory Inc., is the US$29.25 billion compiled by H2 Gambling Capital of London. Accurate figures, he said, are nearly impossible to compile because of the mix of public and private companies working in regulated and unregulated markets.
H2 reported more than 2,400 real-money Internet gambling sites operated in 2010; sports betting and horse racing accounted for US$12.06 billion. H2 estimated that if the U.S. market were regulated, the national gross win would be $22 billion, with 159,750 full-time equivalent jobs and $57.5 billion in domestic taxes.
Scarpelli said the Canadian sports gambling market is worth $450 million, with $200 million net win to the provincial monopolies. B.C.’s Sports Action revenue through March 31, 2010, was $49.8 million. The BC Lottery Corp.’s (BCLC) 2004-launched PlayNow targeted a $30.4 million net win in 2010-11. The BCLC hopes it will break the $100 million mark by 2013.
Europe might be a more mature sports gambling market, but Canada has a sports betting culture that can’t be exploited by its lottery corporations until the law is changed to remove a clause that was intended to prevent match-fixing.
Until then, single-event betting remains banned.
Scarpelli said bettors who don’t like the odds offered by lottery corporations and their two-game minimum use illegal bookies or foreign websites instead. Windsor, Ontario, NDP MP Joe Comartin tabled a private member’s bill to amend the law for single-event bets, but it died on the order paper when the federal election was called.
Scarpelli expects the issue to be resurrected. He said casinos in Windsor and Niagara Falls could use sportsbooks to be more competitive with stateside casinos where smoking is allowed and free booze flows.
The future is ultimately clicks, not bricks. Irish bookmaking giant Paddy Power gleefully featured an iPad graphic on the cover of its 2010 annual report that heralded EU3.834 billion revenue from 838,043 active customers. Its online sportsbook grew 120% over the year to EU176.7 million.
“Having Paddy in your pocket was more popular than Justin Bieber at a teenage girls’ disco, resulting in a 310% increase in our mobile sports betting turnover in 2010,” said the report.
Online customers are 18 to 35 years old and tend to be male, while those who still frequent shops are in their 50s, according to a KPMG advisory to Bwin and Ladbrokes.
“Mobile gaming is becoming the dominant way of placing bets,” said Isle of Man-based Archie Watt. “Betting shops are closing down; that’s because the customer base is dying.”
Growth, he said, is driven from in-game bets or propositions: “What’s going to happen next, who’s going to score, how many penalties are there going to be, is somebody going to score a penalty?”
The BCLC offers multi-event Sports Action Props at retail, but not online.