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While not committing to a firm date, Ontario regulators say that they are pushing unregulated operators to complete the process of transitioning to the regulated online gambling market sooner rather than later.
“We’ve talked a lot about a three-to-six-month business-like transition and we’re now at two months, we’re in the meat of it,” said Tom Mungham, CEO of the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO), during an appearance at the Canadian Gaming Summit in Toronto on Wednesday (June 8).
“So we are internally reviewing the development tools that we need to use, that the registrar can use whether they're legislative or amendments to the registrar’s standards that allows us to draw a line in the sand to make the market regulated and unregulated, make it legal, and illegal.”
Ontario regulators have allowed companies that were operating in the so-called grey market prior to the province’s April 4 launch of regulated online gaming to continue to operate in the province while they go through the registration process.
Mungham did not specify a date at which point the AGCO would begin to pull up the proverbial ladder on unregulated operators but did say that a reported July 1 deadline was inaccurate.
He also recounted a conversation with one operator that proposed completing the transition by January, which the regulator said was not good enough, followed by a November proposal, which still would not be good enough.
Ultimately, Mungham said, the operator now expects to complete the transition by September, which would be the sixth month of the private regulated market in Ontario.
“All I can is that within that three-to-six-month transition period that we talked about with the clock starting on April 4, we will be giving another industry notice that we will be drawing a line in the sand,” he said.
“If you’re in the queue, or thinking about coming in, and you won’t be ready by that time, then you may face a period where you have to go dark, where you will not be able to operate any product, and I know that means your customers may choose to go elsewhere.”
Martha Otton, executive director of iGaming Ontario (iGO), which conducts and manages the private online gaming market, added that iGO is contacting operators that have yet to complete the transition process.
“We are calling operators who indicated an interest in the market and are not proceeding as fast as we anticipated they would,” Otton said. “Frankly, we thought we would have a large number online in June and that has not turned out to be the case, so we’re following up with those operators.”
“We’re doing everything possible that we can do to ensure that we’re not the obstacle in operators coming on.”
Otton said another step iGO is taking is contacting media companies in an effort to limit their advertising to only companies in the regulated market.
Mungham said the AGCO is also reviewing unregulated sites to keep tabs on whether registered suppliers are still doing business with unregulated operators.
“We've set up accounts with well in excess of 200 unregulated market sites, principally to assess whether or not the suppliers will continue to do business with these sites, one of the linchpins of our regulatory framework,” he said.
“We've engaged with those suppliers who are maintaining associations with those operators that are not registered or are not in process,” Mungham continued.
“As an example, one of those suppliers has a relationship with over 50 sites and they’re in the process of removing their association or compelling that site to come in and register with us.”
