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EDMONTON, Alberta — DraftKings’ Alberta site went live when the clock struck midnight on July 13. At 12:02 a.m, the first bet was placed; a parlay on both France and Argentina to win their FIFA World Cup semifinal matches, setting up a rematch of the 2022 final.
Alberta represents the 34th jurisdiction in which DraftKings legally operates. It’s a long way from 2012, when Paul Liberman and two friends launched the site from a spare bedroom in Boston.
DraftKings was one of 22 Alberta online casinos to launch on Monday when Alberta became the second Canadian province to launch a legalized iGaming marketplace. Liberman was in Edmonton to celebrate the launch and talk about what he feels is a bullish future for DraftKings in Canada.
“I think in Alberta, you have a super passionate fan base here that’s so sports-focused,” said Liberman. “It’s a passionate fan base, another large province in Canada – and Canada is a big focus for us. We think that this entire market is really sports-first, and some of it even more so than the U.S. market.”
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- Live Dealer Games Available
- Classic Slots, Blackjack & Roulette
Building Canadian-Specific Products
Liberman said that DraftKings has worked to create unique offerings for the Canadian market. Of course, there’s a big hockey focus, but also a lot of work has been done creating products around Canadian Premier League soccer and the Canadian Football League.
He believes that operators have just scratched the surface when it comes to what the iGaming and sportsbook markets could be.
A New Prediction-Market-Style Feature
Coinciding with the Alberta launch, DraftKings is rolling out a new feature on its platforms that borrows from the prediction markets. It will allow users to track the price histories of bets, to see how the action on a bet has moved over time. It allows users to track price-change trends
“We heard from prediction markets that people like to follow the trend of how the price changes and what happens in real time and what the probabilities are,” said Liberman.”So there’s still so much more that we can do, whether it’s that or video or more content.”
Regulation, Revenue Share, and the Day-One Debate
Alberta required operators to pass internationally recognized tests around responsible gaming. All sites have to post links to the province’s central exclusion program and offer responsible gambling tools, including time and betting limits. And, the province’s take is 20 per cent of total revenue.
“We found that Alberta was actually very commercially reasonable in terms of the regulatory process,” said Liberman. “Every province or jurisdiction is always unique in its own right, and I think Alberta was one that was great to work with. We worked collaboratively with them.
“They were definitely strict. It wasn’t an easy process, and they had a lot of requirements around responsible gaming. But they’re all great, and they’re all ones we actually already had the technology for because we’ve built it ahead of time, and we provide it in all the different jurisdictions in which we operate. So it actually was probably more aligned with what we were already doing as a responsible North American operator.”
As of Friday, Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis had 35 operators pre-approved for the July 13 launch. But only 22 were up and running Monday. Is it important to be a day-one operator? Liberman’s feelings were mixed on that.
Yes, it’s important to be in a new market as early as possible, but is Alberta really a new market? The black iGaming market has existed in the province for years. Millions were bet on unregulated, offshore sites. This isn’t about creating a new playing field; it’s about leveling one that already existed.
“The kickoff is good. It’s been extremely successful. We’ve had great demand, so that’s been really exciting. I think day one is really important, but many of the operators were operating in Alberta yesterday and the day before in a different regulatory environment or non-regulatory environment. But I think that day one is still important because it shows the commitment of us and being both compliant and working with the regulators and getting it right the first time and being ahead of the game.”
