In this episode of The iGaming Show, we talk about regulated iGaming and sports betting making its way to Alberta.

Guest: Dale Nally, the Minister of Service Alberta and Red Tape Reduction of Alberta.

The iGaming Show, presented by Paramount Commerce, is a podcast that will analyse gaming industry trends with experts from various gaming organizations.

Please like, comment, and share this video. Also, stay up to date with our content by subscribing to our YouTube channel.

Full episode transcript:

Varad Mehta: Hello everyone, and welcome to the 18th episode of The iGaming Show presented by Paramount Commerce. I’m your host, Varad Mehta, and in this podcast, we analyse gaming industry trends with experts from various gaming organisations. In today’s episode, we will talk about regulated iGaming and sports betting making its way to Alberta with the Minister of Service Alberta, and Red Tape Reduction of Alberta, Minister Dale Nally. Without further ado, let’s get the show rolling. Minister Nally, how we begin this podcast is by asking you a few fun questions. I have a couple lined up for you. I saw you behind the grill at a fundraising, I think it was a golf tournament, if I’m not mistaken. I have to ask you, what is the best dish you feel you can absolutely deliver all the time?

Dale Nally: Oh, wow. Jeez. I make a spaghetti bolognese like nobody’s business. And I’ll tell you what I do is I am a big fan of the instant pot, and I have this recipe where I cook the bolognese sauce, and I put the pasta right in the bolognese sauce, and I seal the instant pot. And so we actually cook the pasta right with the bolognese, and it actually is just a taste explosion in your mouth, just because the whole flavour profile of the pasta changes when you cook it with the bolognese. And I have I’ve never had anyone not raved about my spaghetti bolognese.

VM: There we go. If you see Minister Nally you need to get the recipe or you have to ask him to bring you some. So next time.

DN: There you go.

VM: Yes.Just one or two last ones. Then I’m going to ask you what these slang terms means. Okay, so I’ll name you some modern day slang terms and you have to tell me what they mean or what you think they could possibly be. Okay. The first one is, do you know what cap is?

DN: I do not.

VM: What if I put it and said, That’s cap. If I said, Minister Nally, that’s cap. What do you think that would be?

DN: I would say it’s a descriptive term to suggest something is awesome or amazing.

VM: You’re close. So cap means it could potentiallybe a lie or something false.

DN: Oh, okay.

VM: Then we have drip. I’d say, Hey, Minister Nally you got some amazing drip on you. What do you think drip would be?

DN: I don’t even want to stress on that one.

VM: Clothes. Clothes.

DN: Oh clothes. I like your definition better. Okay. Clothes. I got some cool drip and I like your drip.

VM: I love it. And the last one is Bussin. I don’t know if even I’m pronouncing that. I’m feeling a little bit old. But Bussin. If I said your spaghetti bolognese is Bussin, what do you think that means?

DN: Oh, I was going to go with rizz first, but now that you use it in a sentence, I would just have to say that it’s just something in another term for awesome.

VM: Yes, there you go. That’s it. Okay, there we go. That was slang terms with Minister Nally. Last question, and I really wanted to add this to you because I saw you speak at the Canadian Gaming Summit. You are a wonderful speaker. You really engage with the audience. You had some nice punches for ice hockey in Ontario. So can you give us a few tips for delivering a really, really good speech, and how to engage the audience?

DN: Yeah, the best tip that I can give people is to know your content and don’t write it out. So if it’s a very technical speech that I’m not comfortable with the content, I’ll read it, but I try not to read my speeches. I don’t go off script. So I have department officials there. They will write my speeches for me, and then they’ll have them approved by three other people. So we know that the content is accurate, reflects the direction of where we’re going. I then take that speech and some people will just read it, but I take it, and I just break it up into chunks. And so I will take the entire speech, and I will condense it on one page. I only need one page in my hand. And I just speak from blocks. So for that speech that you saw me give at the Canadian Gaming Conference, one of my blocks would be an economy, right? And I talked about our strong economy for probably 10 minutes longer I should have. And so that’s my advice, because people, when they speak from the heart, it seems like you’re speaking from the heart when it’s not written down. When it’s written down, it just looks like it’s not from the heart that someone else wrote it. So yeah, that’s my advice. But in order to do that, you must know your material.

VM: So be passionate about what you’re saying and just know your shit. There you go.

DN: Know your shit. There you go.

VM: Love it. Okay. And now, sadly, we have to move on from the fun questions to…

DN: I like those first questions.

VM: Sorry, Minister, what did you say?

DN: I loved your first questions. I like that theme of keeping it fun.

VM: Thank you. Yeah, and we like to keep it chill. You guys are leaders in the space, so we just want to know that there’s a fun side to you as well. So I love that you were so gracious and you answered those questions. But now going to the topic of discussion, talking about the possibility of Alberta having a regulated iGaming market. But I’d like to break this down into sections. How about we start with why the passing of Bill 16 was important for the province of Alberta?

DN: Yeah. We engaged with a lot of the online operators, and we heard from them loud and clear that they would not come to Alberta as long as AGLC is the regulator. Because as you know, AGLC had responsibility to conduct and manage gaming, and they launched PlayAlberta, which is a government site for iGaming. And so if we were to have kept things the way they were, the operators that came here would literally have to share their data, their gaming data, with their competitor. And they told us loud and clear, they’re not going to do that. So Bill 16 did a number of things, but one of the key things for iGaming is to give the minister responsibility to conduct and manage gaming. And that means that companies can come here, and they’re not going to deal with the AGLC. They don’t have to give their data to a competitor, and so they can have confidence that when they’re dealing with the government of Alberta, they’re not dealing with the competitor.

VM: And who has the province consulted to get the ball rolling with regulated iGaming in the province?

DN: Well, I have to say our best partner has been Ontario. They’ve been a good friend to us, and I’ll give a shout out to Minister Downey, who has been a leader in the space, and I’ve met with a number of times, and they have been very agreeable to working with us, sharing us their best practises, what went well, what didn’t go well, what we could do better, that type of thing. So they’ve been just fabulous. We’ve also met with iGO as well, which has been a great partner as well. We also met with regulators across Europe. We were at the London gaming conference, and we met with a number of regulators from Europe that gave us some of their best advice on how we can move forward. So we cast the net as wide as we could in terms of getting community advice because we really want to get this right. And so we cast the net wide to get the best advice we possibly could.

VM: Minister, are you exploring different models from different regions to get what is best for Alberta, or are you taking more of the approach that Ontario has taken for their regulated space?

DN: Well, again, it’s fair to say that we are looking at every possible scenario, but it’s not a secret that we’re free market Conservatives. We believe in an open market approach, and that’s one of the things that I think Ontario really got right, is they have an open and free market for gaming. They had, I think there’s slightly over 50 operators now, I believe, that are working in that space in Ontario, and they have done a tremendous job to get companies out of the grey market. And so, yeah, we believe in the free market approach. And while we’re not ready to announce exactly what it’s going to look like, I’m confident in telling people that it will be a free and open market.

VM: That’s fair. And during your speech during the Canadian Gaming Summit, what I really loved, what you highlighted was the love and the passion that Albertans have for sports, for gaming. Can you tell us what makes Alberta’s gaming industry and the players potentially from the province a little bit different from Ontario and other regions?

DN: Yeah, absolutely. And it starts from the Alberta Advantage. It starts from the fact that we are a low tax environment. We’ve got low corporate taxes, we’ve got no sales tax. We’ve got low employment taxes. We have a tiny land transfer tax. We just are a low tax jurisdiction, which means people have more disposable income. But we also have a younger population because of the energy industry, and we also have higher wages. And in addition to all that, we have a lower cost of living. So you might in Toronto buy a condo for seven, $800,000 that you can get for half of that here. And that means Albertans have a lot more disposable income, and we love our sports. And the example I gave in Toronto was game six of the Stanley Cup final, and our 50–50 hit 16 million. Now, that was a couple of games. There was a couple of games in there, right? But think about that. Edmonton Oiler, 50–50 that did 16 million. That’s crazy. So the fact is, Albertans love our sports, and occasionally we like to wager on it as well. So I think operators that come here are going to be really happy for the sports environment they’re going to encounter.

VM: I’d love for you to expand on that because I think you highlighted some of those things so well during your speech. You spoke about the economic benefits that Alberta could offer to any commercial gaming operators who want to move into that space or potentially even affiliates who are linked to the gaming industry. Could you expand on that a little bit?

DN: Absolutely. We have the lowest corporate taxes in Canada. We’re cheaper than 44 US states. Our corporate taxes put us in line with Louisiana and Texas. And that means we have low taxes. That’s in addition to the no provincial sales tax. And I’m not sure if you saw my title, but I’m the Minister for Service, Alberta, and Red Tape Reduction. And we have gone after red tape with a vengeance. And we have gone after unnecessary bureaucracy, and we’ve eliminated 33%of the red tape in this province, and we have saved job creators in Albertans $2.75 billion dollars. And that makes life better for Albertans, and it makes life more convenient, and it certainly makes life more affordable. And you take all those advantages of… And by the way, I should probably also add, our economy is on fire. People used to think of Alberta as oil and gas, and we have the largest petrochemical industry in the country right here in Alberta, but we’re so much more of an oil, gas, and petrochemical. We’re expanding into clean energies like hydrogen. We also have De Havilland. That’s the one that gets me excited. Who thought Alberta would start manufacturing aeroplanes? But De Havilland is going to build their water bombers right here. Amazon made a $4 billion cloud computing investment in this province. Our economy is on fire. And so we have a bit of a crisis now. We need more people in this province. And so that’s why you probably see the Alberta is calling campaign, just because our economy is so hot. But in addition to that hot economy and high wages, we still have a low cost of living. And that just makes for a more enjoyable place to live, work, and raise your family. So, yeah, our province is growing quickly. And I would encourage not just the operators, not just people that are in the gaming space, but anybody from Ontario, wherever, come check out Alberta. You’re going to like what you’re seeing. And I say this all the time, you won’t come for the weather, but you’ll stay for the low taxes, the low cost of living, and the friendly people.

VM: I like that. And one more thing that I saw you highlight during your speech was responsible gaming and responsible advertising, which was something really interesting that you spoke about. And apart from you highlighting the importance of economic benefits and what is happening in Alberta when it comes to the iGaming space, this is something that’s equally important for consumers and businesses and all stakeholders holders involved. So how do you think that the province will approach responsible gambling in Alberta?

DN: Well, I can’t tell you exactly what it’s going to look like because we’re having those conversations now. We are speaking with operators that are in this space on what they can bring to the equation. We’re talking to the Responsible Gambling Council. We’re talking to regulators across Europe and as well as regulators in North America. We’re trying to get the best advice we can on what a responsible and safer space for online gaming looks like, because I want to be clear, I don’t want the headline in the paper in Calgary or Edmonton to read that, Alberta government brings online gaming to Alberta, because the fact is online gaming is already here. I want the headline to read that the Alberta government makes online gaming more responsible and more safer, and that’s the goal of this. And so there’s a lot of different things that I’ve heard, things that you can let people know how long they’ve been gaming. You can monitor their betting patterns, and you can get people a chance to opt out. So there’s a bunch of things. We are going to, and like I said, we’re still in the process right now of deciding which are the best practises that are going to ensure that Albertans have not just an enjoyable but a safe and responsible gaming experience. And that’s what we’re going to bring forward because it will be a pillar of our iGaming strategy will be safe responsible gambling.

VM: 100 I think I remember from your speech when I heard it, it was big on consumer protection, RG responsible advertising. So that’s amazing that you guys are taking full force into that. And my last question, Minister, would be I hate to put a timeline, – I just want to know what is next in the consultation process, and what do you expect from the province, and when will they be ready for operators coming in the province? I remember you even spoke about consulting with First Nations. So if you could tell what are the next steps in this process, that’d be amazing.

DN: Yeah, we’re just in the process actually of completing our engagement with First Nations, and we’re going to begin our engagement with land-based casinos as well as racing entertainment centres. And so we are going to be doing that this summer. We’re going to be completing that entire process. The department right now is working with lawyers in the gaming space with regulators, looking at what regulations need to look like in Alberta. So all that work is happening now. Now, I regret to tell you that if I were to tell you what date we plan on going live, there would be a lot of other media outlets that would be very upset that I didn’t give them the scoop, because I told them no. So I can’t give you a date, but here’s what I’ll tell you. We are going to move with speed, and I think there’s going to be a lot of people that are pleasantly surprised with how fast we move in the space in Alberta. We move quickly. We deliver results, and we get things done. And that’s exactly what we’re going to do in this space. We’ve got a date in mind. We’re not ready to share, but when we do, we are going to launch an iGaming strategy that is going to be fun for the consumer, and it’s going to have a strong emphasis on safety, responsibility, as well as an attractive place for gamers to come set up shop. I think you’ll be happy, but I can’t quite tell you that date just yet.

VM: I love it. And you sold me on coming to Alberta, your spaghetti, and this market that’s to I really, really appreciate your time, Minister. It must be a crazy, busy time for you working on so much, but I really appreciate you coming on the show and sharing what the province is working on, what you’re working on with your team and everyone all across different regions. Thank you again for this. It really means a lot. Yes, I hope anyone and everyone who listens to this podcast can learn a lot from Minister Nally.

DN: Thank you very much. I can’t wait to come back and speak with you again.

VM: Thank you.

DN: Okay, bye now.

VM: From economic benefits to consumer protection, regulated iGaming and sports betting in Alberta will bring a lot of benefits for players, businesses, and the province itself. I want to thank the Minister of Service, Alberta, and Red Tape Reduction of Alberta, Minister Dale Nally, for joining us today and providing his expertise. If you have any questions for us or Minister Nally, please do comment them down below. Don’t forget to like, share,and subscribe to our YouTube channel. For the episode transcript and moreamazing content, please visit: paramountcommerce.com. Thank you so much for tuning into The iGaming show presented by Paramount Commerce. I’m your host, Varad Mehta, and until next time, keep gaming.