A month ago, Calgarians looking to gamble online had a shorter list to choose from. Not anymore. Alberta’s regulated iGaming market opened on July 13, making it the second Canadian province to open its market to private operators, following Ontario’s lead. Operators have kept arriving since, with the newest names landing in early August.
Bally’s Corporation is the latest addition. On August 4 it brought two platforms into the province at once: its flagship Bally Bet sportsbook and casino, plus a separate casino built entirely around the Monopoly board game. Both had been quietly taking pre-registrations for weeks before going live. They are up now, on desktop and mobile.
That takes the total to 26 active, licensed sites, and it will not stay there long. Twenty-two operators launched on day one in July. Since then Entain has added Sports Interaction and Party Casino, and Betsson has brought over its Casino Days platform. According to Casinos.com, the province’s new online casino options already read like a who’s-who of regulated Canadian gambling: bet365, BetMGM, DraftKings, FanDuel, Caesars, theScore. Most of the names Albertans know from Ontario are here or on the way.
What separates these platforms matters more than the raw count. Monopoly Casino leans all the way into its branding, running games like Monopoly Live and Monopoly Big Baller and a rewards system where players earn in-game currency they can convert to cash. Stack slots, table games and live dealer options together and the library reportedly tops 900 titles. Bally Bet goes the other way, pairing its casino with a full sportsbook so a player can back the Flames one minute and spin a slot the next, all from one account.
None of this landed by accident. Alberta spent years weighing whether to follow Ontario’s 2022 approach, opening the market to private, competing operators instead of keeping everything inside the government-run Play Alberta platform. Every live operator now pays a licensing fee and hands over 20% of revenue in tax, a structure designed to pull money back from unregulated offshore sites into something with local oversight.
That was always the point. Provincial officials have cited estimates that Albertans were spending around $358 million a year on offshore sites, platforms that pay no local tax and offer no protection under Alberta law when a payout is disputed or an account gets frozen. Moving that kind of money onto licensed platforms does not happen in one launch week. It takes months, maybe longer, and the province has been explicit that clawing back the offshore market is the whole rationale.
The protections in the rollout go further than Ontario’s did at launch, too. Alberta switched on universal self-exclusion from day one: sign up once and you are blocked across every licensed site in the province, rather than chasing each operator separately. Registered operators also cannot use celebrities to sell gambling directly, though famous faces are still allowed to front responsible-gambling messaging.
Calgary Guardian noted earlier this year that online gambling has stopped being an occasional night out and started competing with Netflix and mobile games for a spot on the couch. The Alberta launch has pushed that shift along, and not subtly. It has put a far wider menu of licensed, tax-paying options in front of players who, until recently, had little reason not to use an offshore site with no local accountability at all.
Not everyone is rushing in. Super Group, the company behind Betway, has said it is content to wait until later in the year before bringing its platform to Alberta; its CEO would rather watch the market settle than jump in mid-scramble. That patience suggests the current run of launches, Bally’s two platforms included, is nowhere near finished. More than 50 operators have applied for registration in the province. Roughly half are live.
So there is plenty for Calgarians to explore, whether that means a themed slot session on Monopoly Casino, a straightforward sportsbook account with Bally Bet, or simply comparing what each newly licensed platform offers before deciding where the money goes.