Private gambling companies and industry groups have waged a years-long lobbying campaign to shape Alberta’s regulated internet gaming and sports betting strategy, including hiring several consultants with ties to the United Conservative Party government, the Investigative Journalism Foundation has found.

Alberta is expected to launch its iGaming market early next year, making it the second province where residents can legally gamble online and place bets with private operators. Provincial records show that since 2020, at least 21 different gambling companies and industry associations registered to guide, inform, and educate various government ministries on online betting regulation and market frameworks.

Global gaming platforms like BetMGM, Caesars Entertainment, and Bally’s Corp. have all sought meetings with Alberta government officials, as have a swath of major Canadian companies including the Stars Group, Score Media and Gaming, and its parent company, Rogers.

Along with their own in-house advocates, gaming companies and groups have also enlisted the help of professional influencers from more than a dozen public relations firms.

The IJF’s analysis of public lobbying records found 11 of the lobbyists registered to represent the gaming and sports betting industry previously held positions within the United Conservative Party or the Alberta government.

Representing the Canadian Online Gaming Association, Endgame Strategies’ lobbyist Pierçon Knezic worked as the UCP’s deputy campaign manager during the 2023 election. In between her time as a ministerial press secretary and a senior communications adviser for Alberta’s government, Eliza Snider was part of the team managing the Score Media and Gaming account for public relations giant Hill & Knowlton.

Wellington Advocacy employed a stable of former government staff for clients such as Pure Canadian Gaming and Caesars Digital, including Clancy Bouwman, assistant to Premier Jason Kenney; Brad Tennant, former UCP executive director; Ashley Wilde, former UCP director of operations; Nick Koolsbergen, Kenney’s chief of staff and campaign director; Peter Csillag, UCP caucus director of issues management from 2017 to 2019; Lucas Robertson, who served with the UCP caucus, the minister of health’s office and the UCP caucus whip’s office; and Ethan Lecavalier-Kidney, former policy adviser to Alberta’s finance minister.

Brandon Aboultaif, press secretary to Minister of Service Alberta and Red Tape Reduction Dale Nally, who is responsible for iGaming legislation, would not say which companies Nally has met with but told the IJF in an email that the minister and his department “continue to meet with all interested industry stakeholders to engage on issues related to the launch of a private, regulated iGaming market in Alberta.”

“We are taking the next step toward establishing a private, regulated online gaming market in Alberta by further engaging with Indigenous partners and stakeholders on Alberta’s iGaming strategy, including the development of regulations related to social responsibility and consumer protection,” he said.

Regulated online gambling has grown rapidly in North America following the decriminalization of single-game sports betting in the United States in 2018 and in Canada in 2021. Single-game betting allows people to bet on various aspects of individual sports events.

While the expansion of legal markets has corresponded with a surge in lobbying activity, industry efforts to push for privately owned online gambling go back much further, said Renze Nauta, program director for work and economics at Cardus, a non-partisan Christian think tank.

Nauta pointed to a 2011 report on single-event sports wagering and related press releases from the Canadian Gaming Association as examples of the long-standing push for open markets, as well as the source of industry statistics on black-market gambling activity that have been widely circulated and used to make the case for legalization.

“I can’t speak to the intensity of the lobbying effort; it’s clearly a long-standing one. Because from 2011 to 2021, that’s a 10-year period where there was clearly an attempt to bring this to Canada,” Nauta said.

In its publications, the Canadian Gaming Association estimated that Canadians were spending at least $10 billion annually on illegal single-event sports betting, and an additional $4 billion gambling on grey-market websites based in jurisdictions where these bets are legal. The estimate that $14 billion in illegal sports betting was taking place in Canada was subsequently cited by members of Parliament and continues to be referenced by government and media.

The potential taxable income that would come from capturing a share of black-market activity has been a primary justification for iGaming legalization cited by legislators from Alberta to Ontario to the federal government and various U.S. states.

The potential tax revenue has also been a consistent theme in lobbying communications recorded in the Alberta lobbyist registry. Notices filed by Pure Canadian Gaming note the “economic contributions of gaming to the Alberta economy.” The Stars Group declared its intention to educate the government and to establish “safe, regulated environments that benefit jurisdictions,” including “incremental government revenue opportunities.” And Century Mile Racetrack and Casino had discussions with the government on how “gaming can drive tourism and economic prosperity.”

A similar emphasis on corporate and economic benefits has also dominated Canadian media coverage of the legalization of sports betting, according to a study from researchers at the University of British Columbia.

About 85% of newspaper articles on sports betting between 2020 and 2022 featured themes of legality and industry change, while the issues of gambling harm and reform were present in less than a quarter of articles surveyed.

“The newspaper coverage through that three-year window is really emphasizing and framing the economic, business and financial considerations. Particularly this idea of capturing the illegal market through legalization and regulation, at the cost of much discussion around harms and the risks of excessive gambling and the health of the public,” said Luke Clark, director of the Centre for Gambling Research at UBC.

The study also found that industry representatives were by far the most frequent sources interviewed in media coverage. Seventy per cent of articles included voices from the gaming industry, while few academics, addiction and public health advocates or people with lived experience with gambling made the news.

Clark said this imbalance in perspective stems from the disparity in size and resources between the groups representing these different viewpoints.

While academics might offer a more complicated and nuanced take, they have less time to dedicate to media, and people with lived experience aren’t connected, co-ordinated and issuing press releases.

The gaming providers now operating in Canada, on the other hand, are big global gambling corporations with resources dedicated to influencing government and public opinion.

“These are huge companies with a footprint in many different parts of the world. They have large public relations teams and huge marketing and advertising budgets. And they’re very well positioned when media reach out. They’re right on it with clear messages that frame things from their perspective,” Clark said.

Source: thetyee.ca