Key Takeaways:
- PENN Entertainment CEO Jay Snowden has his eyes on other provinces soon becoming available to theScore Bet and Hollywood Casino amid talk of further Canadian iGaming expansion.
- PENN is pleased with its start to life in Alberta’s new market, where it claims to hold roughly 10% market share in the early months.
- PENN Interactive revenue grew 17% year over year in Q3 2026, although its adjusted EBITDA stood at a loss of US$18.3m.
PENN Entertainment CEO Jay Snowden hopes to soon be able to launch theScore Bet in other provinces amid talk of further regulated iGaming expansion in Canada.
Speaking on a third-quarter earnings call on Thursday, Nov. 5, Snowden discussed theScore Bet and Hollywood Casino’s “very strong” start to life in Alberta’s new market, which opened in July.
“We are pleased with the early performance of our Alberta iCasino and [online sports betting] operations, with volumes and users showing continued growth into October,” Snowden told investors and analysts. “This launch has expanded our presence in Canada and positions us well for future growth should additional provinces privatize.”
Ontario launched regulated iGaming in 2022, and Alberta followed in July 2026. Momentum appears to be growing in some other parts of the country, with several developments in recent weeks:
- Quebec’s new Premier Paul St-Pierre Plamondon expressed support for expanding iGaming before being elected in October.
- New Brunswick Finance Minister René Legacy confirmed to Canadian Gaming Business that the province “is exploring options around regulating private online operators.”
- Nova Scotia Finance Minister John Lohr told reporters that the province’s government is watching Ontario and Alberta closely and that “conversations are underway right now.”
“I would be surprised if there won’t continue to be conversations in the other provinces,” PENN CEO Snowden said on Thursday.
“In Canada, Ontario has been a really good story, both from an OSB and iGaming perspective, tax generation, and delivering on what the province was hoping to deliver on, and Alberta’s off to a great start. I’d imagine other provinces are going to be looking at what Ontario and Alberta were able to achieve, and probably continuing to take a close look at that.
“I’m encouraged that that will likely play out over the coming quarters and years.”
PENN claims approximately 10% market share in Alberta
In the meantime, Snowden said, Ontario continues to be “one of our most attractive jurisdictions.” Active users and revenue per user in the province contributed to revenue growth in the province across both online casino and online sports betting.
Alberta has started along similar lines.
PENN launched on day one in Alberta, providing three of the total of 22 licensed iGaming sites that hit the ground running on the very first day of the market on July 13:
- Hollywood Casino
- theScore Bet
- theScore Casino
Snowden noted that Alberta was “definitely busier at the starting gate” than Ontario was when it opened its doors on April 4, 2022, with big brands ready to go on day one and existing grey-market operators moving over to regulated operations. But he is pleased with how his company started in a crowded field.
“We’re off to a really strong start on online sports betting, already scratching at the same market share levels we deliver in Ontario through the first few months in Alberta, so that’s very encouraging,” the CEO said. “On the iCasino side, we’re about halfway to where we are in Ontario [market share].”
Neither Ontario nor Alberta’s revenue reporting breaks down revenue by operator, so exact market share statistics are not publicly available. Asked by an analyst whether PENN’s share in Alberta is around the 9-10% mark, Snowden called that estimate “exactly right.”
“We’ve always said we are at very low double-digit on the OSB market share in Ontario, and we are super close to hitting that number after the first three months in Alberta. Our sports betting handle has actually been outpacing the market when you look on a month-to-month basis over the first four months. It’s early days, but we are off to a really encouraging start there.”
Alberta online casino opportunity bigger than PENN expected
Executives spoke on Thursday after PENN Entertainment reported that the PENN Interactive segment’s revenues grew 17% year over year from US$297.7m to US$348.4m in Q3 2026. The digital business is still not profitable, reporting an adjusted EBITDA loss of US$18.3m for the third quarter, but that was significantly better than the loss of US$76.6m it reported in Q3 2025.
Snowden credited sustained growth in Canadian iGaming operations and U.S. standalone Hollywood iCasino as a big contributor to those improvements. PENN noted that online casino represents a larger share of PENN Interactive’s gaming revenue mix now than it did a year ago.
The company sees particularly good news on that front in Alberta.
“The more encouraging part on the iGaming side is that, perhaps because it’s a more mature market in Alberta from the grey market, the TAM on iCasino looks a lot larger than we anticipated,” Snowden said.
theScore Bet strikes new Canadian sports partnerships
PENN enhanced theScore’s positioning in Alberta and across Canada in recent months with some notable sports partnerships, including as the presenting sponsor of the new Canadian Football League (CFL) app and its free-to-play CFL Fantasy game.
At the start of Q4 in early October, PENN signed a new Canadian-facing partnership with the NFL that gives both its theScore and Hollywood Casino brands status as an official league partner, granting them intellectual property and advertising rights.
Amid talk of more provinces following Ontario and Alberta’s lead, Snowden emphasized that PENN feels it is positioned well in Canada on the whole.
“I think Alberta’s early results are proving that theScore is a Canadian brand, not an Ontario brand,” he added. “And our market share results are going to showcase that.”
