Alberta ends igaming transition with 29 operators approved

Alberta closed its three-month online gambling transition period on October 13, and unlicensed sites now have to stop taking bets from Albertans. For PSPs and operators, the practical message is simple: the province is moving from a grey-market scramble to an enforcement-backed regulated list.

1. By the deadline, 29 operators and 50 brands had been approved by the Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis (AGLC) and the Alberta igaming Corporation (AiGC). The AiGC also keeps a public list of approved sites on its website, which is the cleaner reference point for deciding who can serve the market and who cannot.
2. AGLC says it will monitor compliance and take enforcement action against operators that continue serving Albertans without approval, including those still waiting for authorisation. In other words, the transition window is over; if a site is still taking Alberta bets without approval, it is now in enforcement territory.
3. The launch caps several years of legislative work aimed at building a competitive, locally supervised industry. Alberta’s framework was largely based on Ontario’s model, introduced in 2022, which gave the province a working template for regulation, approval flows, and market structure.
4. AiGC chief executive Dan Keene said, “Alberta’s regulated igaming market exists to protect Albertans. We look forward to working with operators who have chosen accountability by transitioning away from the illegal grey market.”
5. BetMGM said it has seen encouraging results since launching in Alberta on July 13. The operator said its per-player metrics were exceeding those recorded during its Ontario launch, and chief financial officer Gary Deutsch said Alberta accounted for about 20 per cent of the new players acquired by the company in the third quarter and had outpaced internal forecasts and daily targets.

For high-risk payment providers, the important part is the approval list. Alberta is now a regulated market with named operators, a public whitelist, and an active enforcement posture, which is the difference between a market you can underwrite and one you have to keep at arm’s length.