SBC News has dipped its toes into the documentary waters for the first time, releasing this week The Ontario Frontier: Exploring the iGaming Landscape to tell the story of the province’s regulated sports betting and igaming industry which was launched in April 2022. James Ross, SBC’s multimedia journalist, and senior journalist Charlie Horner joined us on the morning before the unveiling of the documentary to give Gaming News Canada the motivation for telling the Ontario story in long-form video, and how it all came together.

Gaming Association vice president Maureen Beddis walked us through the plans for the 2023 Global Gaming Expo, which begins Monday at The Venetian in Las Vegas. Beddis provided a preview of the education sessions scheduled for next week along with flagging some of the conference’s new elements, and delivering some helpful hints for first-time G2E attendees.

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The exclusive partnership between FanDuel and TSN, which started in the early days of Ontario’s regulated sports betting and gaming marketplace, had been touted for the sharing of information between the trading team at FD and the production folks in the network’s newsroom. Back in August, the partners unveiled an enhanced feature on the TSN website that further showcased the integration of content and product.

Conor Murray, FanDuel’s vice president of marketing, joined the Gaming News Canada Show presented by Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP to discuss the continued collaboration around mobile product innovation and story-telling. Murray’s appearance happened just days before Genius Sports announced the launch of its BetVision platform which includes providing sportsbooks with live video of NFL games (Sam McQuillan of Legal Sports Report had first dibs on this story last week with his piece on Fanatics using the Genius platform to stream NFL games in its sportsbook app).

PointsBet Canada’s chief commercial officer, Nic Sulsky, returned to the show on the eve of the second annual PointsBet Invitational. The single-knockout men’s and women’s curling event begins Friday night at the Sixteen Mile Sports Complex in Oakville, Ontario, and PointsBet is once again hosting a $1 million bracket challenge. Sulsky spoke with us about the progress that’s taken place in PointsBet’s partnership with Curling Canada and the opportunity that an Ontario-based PBI presents for the operator this year.

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The new episode of the Gaming News Canada Show presented by Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP brought together host Steve McAllister with Parleh Media Group co-founders Mark Silver and Gavin Roth to discuss matters of the sports business sort.

Both Roth, who has put his stamps on so many partnership and sponsorship deals for some of Canada's largest sports organizations, expanded on his comments in the Sept. 14 edition of the Gaming News Canada newsletter presented by GeoComply, that the fledgling Professional Women's Hockey League provides an opportunity that goes beyond customer acquisition in regulated sports betting and gaming markets in Ontario, New York and Massachusetts.

Silver and Roth also addressed the recent news that sport drink company BioSteel, currently owned by Canopy Growth, is seeking creditor protection - and a new buyer. 

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Paul Burns, the president and CEO of the Canadian Gaming Association joined the latest episode of the Gaming News Canada Show some 24 hours after giving the latest update to the association’s growing membership. Not surprisingly, some of the conversation during the CGA’s virtual call involved the proposed standards to advertising in the gaming industry by the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario. Burns, who’ll be part of a discussion on regulated gaming in our home and native land beyond Ontario at next week’s SBC Summit Barcelona, also answered our questions on the leadership changes at the AGCO over the past two months.

John Pappas, GeoComply’s senior VP of government and public affairs, made his return to the show to shine a brighter light on GeoComply’s NFL Week 1 report, which included a 56-per-cent rise in betting transactions from a year ago. Pappas also provided an update on efforts by U.S. states to join the 30-something states with legal sports betting.

Amanda Brewer, the Canadian country manager for Kindred Group, and her LeoVegas counterpart Jacob Hargaden-Llewellin also lent their voices to the conversation on the latest news in the Canadian sports betting and gaming world.

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The Gaming News Canada Show presented by Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP returned from summer break to our live recordings on LinkedIn Audio this week.

Amanda Brewer, the Canadian country manager for Kindred Group, and Sports Interaction head of trading operations Phill Gray discussed the amended standards around sports betting advertising introduced last week by the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario, including a request from the Canadian Gaming Association to sit down with the AGCO and find clarity to some of the changes. Dr. Michael Naraine from Brock University joined the show to call once again for industry stakeholders to participate in putting together data to determine the impact of celebrity appearances in advertising and marketing campaigns on Ontarians placing wagers.

Brewer also weighed in on a summer of changes with leadership at the board level with both the AGCO and iGaming Ontario, and the hiring of Dr. Karin Schnarr to replace Tom Mungham as AGCO’s CEO and registrar. The show finished with a segment featuring Gray on the start of the NFL regular season and some advice for bettors.

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The latest episode of the Gaming News Canada Show podcast presented by Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP is focused on Tuesday’s announcement by the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario with amended standards for marketing and advertising by sports betting and igaming operators in the province.

Canadian Gaming Association grand poobah Paul Burns, PointsBet Canada executive Nic Sulsky, and Betano’s Canadian country manager Kris Abbott provided their respective takes on the news, and what the rule changes mean for the industry as it heads into the busy fall sports schedule.

Burns also spoke with us about a recent Toronto Star column around competition manipulation in sport, and concerns that a match-fixing scandal in Canadian sport is just around the corner.

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It’s been a while since we last picked the brain of long-time sports betting consultant, sports bettor and the man behind the @SharpEdgePicks account on Twitter/X. 

So, with the end of August very near, Redlick joined us this week for a rapid round of sorts on a number of topics – including his thoughts on the wins and losses from the first 18 months of regulated sports betting in Ontario and the products provided by operators in a highly competitive marketplace. We also asked his opinion on last week’s partnership announcement between Woodbine Entertainment and bet365, and the challenges both Penn and ESPN face in their new alliance.

Also, we started the podcast by asking Redlick for some advice on the rest of the Major League Baseball season, and the Toronto Blue Jays, and some helpful hints for bettors heading into the NFL regular season.

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The start of the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto this weekend presents the annual reality check that summer’s end is just around the corner.

With an eye towards post-Labour Day weekend, and also looking back at a summer that’s been anything but dormant in the North American sports betting and igaming industry, we brought back our usual Gaming News Canada Show regulars to join us for a past-present-near future episode of the podcast. Kindred Group’s Canadian lead Amanda Brewer, PointsBet Canada CCO Nic Sulsky and Kaizen Gaming’s Canadian grand poobah Kris Abbott weighed in on an array of happenings and issues from the past couple of months, and also provided their insight into what’s coming in what’s expected to be a very active fall for operators.

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Jeffrey Haas’s professional life started as a journalist at the Toronto Sun in 1994, but 10 years later it took a sharp detour into the business of online poker. Since then, the Toronto native has held leadership positions with Bwin, the Asia Pacific Poker Tour, PokerStars, DraftKings, and most recently with CoinSmart and Atomic Hub.

The gambling industry veteran – and current free agent – joined the Gaming News Canada Show for a one-on-one interview. The conversation included a deep dive into this week’s alliance between Penn and ESPN, which is getting into the sportsbook game, Penn’s hefty investments in both the ESPN deal and its acquisition of theScore, along with the challenge ESPN BET faces in competing with the major players in the U.S., online sports betting game. Haas also offered a few thoughts on the potential impact of the Penn/ESPN partnership on the Canadian sports betting and media landscape. 

Haas also spoke about his involvement in online gambling across our home and native land, the creation of Ontario’s regulated market, and the positive impact it’s had on OLG’s online gaming operations (he also cited the missed opportunity by other provinces across the country to follow Ontario’s lead). 

Our interview with Haas concluded with him discussing his current involvement with a Danish venture capital firm, and what excites him about the future of gaming.

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This week, we caught up with Dustin Gouker, the former Catena Media executive and long-time industry watcher who's now the author of The Closing Line blog. Gouker walked us through the controversy involving daily fantasy sports operators as both PrizePicks and Underdog Fantasy have been ordered to stop operating in Wyoming's regulated sports betting market, and the owners of Betr have launched a DFS product.

Friends of GNC - and SBC execs - Sue Schneider and Nicole Fields also joined the podcast to discuss their participation in a gathering last month in Las Vegas of women who work in the gambling industry. While both Schneider and Fields agree significant progress has been made in expanding executive-suite opportunities for women, they also agree there's still work to be done.

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