EDMONTON, ALTA. — DraftKings was one of the very first operators to launch when the clock struck midnight and Alberta launched its regulated iGaming market on July 13. There was never any doubt that it would be raring to go, says the company’s co-founder and President of Operations Paul Liberman.
“It’s not often that both OSB and iGaming come at once,” Liberman told Canadian Gaming Business in an interview on Monday. “Canada is such a large opportunity for us. It’s exciting. I mean, it’s just always exciting to see more people using the product that you’ve built.”
Alberta is DraftKings’ 34th online sports betting jurisdiction in North America and its seventh for online casino. But, to Liberman’s point, the last time one of them began allowing both sports betting and iCasino on the same day was Ontario, when Canada’s first commercial iGaming market opened back on April 4, 2022.
DraftKings not exactly a new name in Alberta
Whereas DraftKings launched a little late in Ontario four years ago, Canadian Gaming Business observed that it was accepting bets within minutes of midnight in Alberta, one of the very first to do so. The company has a firm foothold in Ontario to go alongside its leadership position in its 32 U.S. markets, where it generally vies with FanDuel for the top spot by both handle and revenue.
Liberman says DraftKings is the largest operator south of the border in the U.S. by handle in sports betting and No. 2 in online casino. The company wants similar status across its two Canadian provinces.
Speaking with Canadian Gaming Business on Monday’s launch day in an Edmonton restaurant, Liberman pointed out that, unlike some of DraftKings’ competitors in newly-regulated Alberta, DraftKings never previously offered sports betting or casino in that province, just as it refrained from offering those products in the pre-2022 Ontario unregulated market.
“We have not been live outside of Ontario,” he said. “A lot of operators have been live here. Albertans used sportsbooks yesterday, right? Today’s the launch, but those sites that launched today, in many cases, existed yesterday and were taking bets.”
Still, he acknowledged that DraftKings nevertheless has an advantage of its own: It’s already a well-known name in an Alberta market that already hosts 22 iGaming sites run by a total of 15 separate operators.
DK has to give up DFS… for now
One of those reasons is that, like in Ontario, DraftKings arrives in Alberta with a legacy as a longstanding heritage daily fantasy sports (DFS) platform. And, also like in Ontario, the new regulated marketplace means DraftKings has been forced to shut down that side of its business in Alberta. The provinces’ rules mean their commercial online gambling activity must stay within their respective borders, making DFS a less lucrative and less viable product for licensed operators.
“We started off as a daily fantasy sports product, and I’m learning there are more Albertans who like daily fantasy sports than I even realized,” Liberman said on Monday.
Unfortunately, [DFS] had to be shut down today as we launched our sportsbook and iGaming product.
“I actually didn’t even realize we shut off DFS until I learned about it today from a player here. It’s not that I’m not focused on DFS. It’s just that sports and casino have been such a big portion of our focus, and DFS is a much smaller product. Maybe it just wasn’t ready for primetime.”
On that front, things could change in the future.
The Alberta iGaming Corporation (AiGC) and iGaming Ontario (iGO) are working on a memorandum of understanding to pool their players of peer-to-peer games like DFS and online poker. Meanwhile, pending the outcome of a multi-provincial Supreme Court appeal, they could soon be allowed to connect their players with those in other countries. On the very day that Alberta opened its iGaming market, a hearing in that international liquidity case was scheduled for Oct. 7, 2026.
Sports history, casino focus
While DraftKings had its roots in DFS and its early cachet in sports, casino has risen to the forefront in recent years. The number of U.S. iCasino states may be smaller than for sports wagering, but where it is available to operators, the revenue potential is huge.
Just look at Ontario, where gamblers wagered a total of $8.37bn on online casino in May 2026 alone, resulting in $326.4m in gross gaming revenue (GGR) for operators. Compared to $972m in sports betting handle and $81.3m in sports wagering revenue, iCasino comprised 88% of iGO operators’ total handle and 79% of their aggregated GGR.
DraftKings has spent plenty of time and money on building up its casino product in recent years. “We have an amazing DFS product, an amazing sportsbook product, but I’d say our casino product is our best of the three,” Liberman suggested.
DraftKings hosts sports and casino all in one app these days, but it also offers a second, casino-only brand. Golden Nugget Online Gaming, which DraftKings bought for more than $1.5B in stock five years ago, launched in Ontario last summer and went live alongside DraftKings’ flagship app on day one in Alberta.
Liberman says that helps DraftKings increase its appeal to more casino-centric customers.
“The DraftKings brand has been very sports-focused, historically. A lot of our marketing is around sports, so people associate it more with sports than gaming, even though we have a world-class casino product. Golden Nugget has been a traditional gaming brand, and we’ve taken almost the same product and adjusted it for the Golden Nugget audience, which skews a little bit more slot-friendly with different content likes.
The thought is, if you think of DraftKings for sports betting, maybe you’ll think of Golden Nugget for casino.
“You have the same DraftKings wallet, the same loyalty program, lots of the same features also under the Golden Nugget name. You can use your same DraftKings account on either one. It’s just that for some people, the Golden Nugget brand resonates more.”
DraftKings eyes Alberta sports partnerships, retail presence
That doesn’t mean DraftKings isn’t coming into Alberta with a big sports focus, though.
The operator is already an officially authorized partner of numerous major sports leagues, including:
- MLB
- NFL
- NBA
- NHL
- PGA TOUR
- UFC
- WNBA
In the U.S., it also has partnerships with specific major-league teams in some markets, like MLB’s Detroit Tigers and the Chicago Cubs and White Sox. Will it pursue similar opportunities in Alberta?
“Oh, absolutely, we are exploring and are going to explore sports partnerships,” Liberman said. “You get such passionate fanbases here, and loyal. I think it’d be crazy not to explore that. Hopefully, it’ll come with time.”
Alberta Gaming, Liquor, and Cannabis (AGLC) regulations also allow for land-based casinos and pro sports arenas to set up retail sportsbooks, something DraftKings has utilized in numerous states, although the opportunity hasn’t been there in Ontario.
“Those are one-off decisions that we make based on the location and the strategy,” Liberman noted. “We look at them as individual investments. How they will perform, the different populations and the different audiences. Generally, we like that [Alberta has] included land-based casinos. We’ve learned in the U.S. that when they’re included, it leads to a better product and creates better alignment between the online operators and the land-based operators, so it makes sense.
“We’ll see how that evolves. Those are conversations that happen. You know, if it’s at the Oilers stadium, maybe it makes sense. But if it’s somewhere where no one’s ever at, then sometimes the operational complexity is just really tough to operate these retail establishments.”
In the meantime, DraftKings has its dual-brand iGaming approach live in a second Canadian province. Not everything in Alberta will be like it is in Ontario, but much will be similar, not least the fact that with more than 50 operator sites registered, it will be fiercely competitive.
Like many of the new entrants, for now, DraftKings is just happy to be here.
