Gambling has been a hot topic in Alberta lately. The province’s new iGaming strategy, “established a regulated iGaming market, providing operators an opportunity to shift from the grey market to legal status,” according to Alberta’s official website. This means that Alberta will regulate online gambling, which I’m in favor of.
Alberta’s iGaming revenue will allocate 3% of the total gross to First Nations and social responsibility funding, and whatever remains will be shared 80% to operators and 20% to the government.
What does the government stand to gain from gambling being more accessible? You can be sure that if they can make money, they will push hard to make you want to gamble.
A 20 per cent gain seems more than high enough of a profit for Alberta to encourage its population to gamble, despite having the goal of enforcing safeguards and implementing marketing and advertising controls.
Being a sports fan makes it even worse. I can’t remember the last time I tried to watch a Blue Jays game and there weren’t gambling ads being shoved down my throat. I just hate when my DraftKings ads are interrupted by the Calgary Flames!
A 2024 CBC article claims that you spend 21 per cent of every sports game watching gambling ads, which I can only assume has gotten worse over the past almost three years.
With the Launch of the Alberta iGaming Corporation (AiGC), I started to notice Alberta’s “Gamble Responsibly” PSAs all the time, but you know what else I see? Gambling ads, EVERYWHERE.
These ads aren’t just for sports. The other day, when I was driving around with a friend, we saw nine billboards across Edmonton for various online gambling sites. Outside of MacEwan’s Building 9, a giant billboard screen cycles through gambling ads, approved by AiGC. I open my phone, get stuck doomscrolling, and see Instagram reels yelling at me to play RainBet so I can chug Buzzballs. As my brain melts away, I can’t help but feel a little hopeless.
I want to support my favourite sports teams, but when I know all they want me to do is blow my money on betting, I feel really gross watching them. At least when they wanted me to blow money on a physical product like sports gear, merch, or even just alcohol, I got something for my money.
So much of Edmonton’s local culture and identity is based on a sports team. What do we do when that team doesn’t want what’s best for our wallets?
