Commercial online gambling is now legal in Alberta, thanks to Bill 48. But, for now, the doors remain closed.

What Alberta’s digital sports betting and casino gaming market will look like, and when licensed operators will be able to take their first bets, remain the biggest questions.

The minister responsible for the online gambling market plan and the author of the iGaming Alberta Act, Dale Nally, spoke to attendees at Canadian Gaming Summit on Wednesday.

This time last year, he was announcing at CGS that Alberta would indeed be pursuing an Ontario-inspired open-market model. His presentation this time around did not offer much in the way of set-in-stone news, but he suggested that the province is on course to launch regulated commercial iGaming in early 2026.

“In terms of timeframes, I can’t give you a month, but I can tell you early next year we’re going to be cutting the ribbon on iGaming in Alberta,” Nally told attendees. “We’re very excited to be able to offer that, and we’re going to have more to share with you in the near future.”

That timeline has been pushed back from the October 2025 target that Nally laid out at the Global Gaming Expo last October. But it is in line with what executives at online gambling operators have been projecting in recent months.

In the meantime, Nally and Co. will continue to consult with both land-based casinos and First Nations stakeholders in Alberta. “We need to hear from them on what they have to say, what they think and how they see themselves contributing to iGaming.”

Working out the details is taxing

Whereas online sports betting and online casino legislation in the U.S. often stipulates details such as tax rate, licensing fees and where gaming revenues would go, Alberta’s iGaming bill passed through the legislature without many specifics included.

One aspect included in the bill was that the province will implement a centralized self-exclusion tool for players, something that Ontario is working on adding to its own market more than three years after launch. Nally noted that the Alberta self-exclusion tool will include not just all online gaming sites but also land-based casinos and racing entertainment centres.

However, the inclusion of that detail in the legislation was the exception, not the rule. Nally said during legislative hearings for Bill 48 earlier this year that he did not want to write other things such as responsible gambling initiatives into the bill itself. Instead, those aspects will be hashed out in the regulations, which the minister emphasized will allow the Alberta government and the new Alberta iGaming Corporation, the market’s conduct-and-manage agency, more flexibility to make changes as the market evolves.

Nally acknowledged that many people in the room may have turned up to his speech hoping to get some insight into key aspects of the market, such as where the tax rate will land.

“I know there are lots of you today that want me to tell you about our advertising, about our tax rate, about things like that. We haven’t answered those questions yet. We’re participating in these consultations. I will be going back to my cabinet colleagues in the fall, and we’re going to be talking about advertising standards and tax rates, and then we’re going to make those difficult decisions.”

Ontario the blueprint

Establishing a competitive, profitable and responsible online gambling market in Alberta will not be a case of simply copy-and-pasting from Ontario. The two provinces have many differences, not least in the way they tax both their businesses and their residents. Nally has frequently vaunted Alberta’s low corporate and personal taxes and lack of sales tax as factors that should make the province an appealing place to be for gambling operators.

But, ultimately, the minister reiterated that the Alberta government will look to Ontario as a road map.

“We’ve been watching Ontario, and Ontario has done some fantastic things,” he said. “We know we have Albertans gambling online and we have a fiduciary responsibility to all Albertans to make sure that when they gamble online, they can do so safely and in a more responsible fashion.

“We know that we can never say gambling will always be safe, but we know that there are safer ways to do it. There are more responsible ways to do it, and that’s what Ontario has done. They’re leading the way, so we are following what they’re doing very closely.”