Alberta’s transition window for grey-market online gambling operators has closed, with around 50 regulated sites now live in Canada’s second provincial open iGaming market. Any site still taking wagers from Albertans without approval is now operating illegally, and provincial authorities say they are preparing to act.

The province’s regulated market launched on 13 July 2026. Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis (AGLC) granted operators a grace period of up to three months on a case-by-case basis, provided they could show a path to compliance. That period ended on 13 October.

Counting the market

Reported totals vary slightly depending on timing. A spokesperson for the Alberta iGaming Corporation (AiGC) told Casino.org that 51 approved sites were live from 30 operators, while cautioning that the number could change during the day. Other outlets put the tally at between 48 and 50 sites. Canadian Gaming Business reported that more than 60 sites are expected by 2027.

The final figure fell short of earlier projections. Before the deadline, the provincial government had suggested the count of licensed sites could rise from about 35 to around 60 by October.

Before the new regime, PlayAlberta, run by AGLC, was the only legal online casino in the province, although offshore brands operated openly in the grey market. The iGaming Alberta Act, passed in 2025, created a competitive framework broadly modelled on Ontario, where private operators contract with a provincial body rather than holding conventional licences. Ontario opened its market in April 2022 and now has dozens of operators live, giving Alberta a benchmark for how quickly a regulated market can absorb former grey-market brands.

To operate legally, companies must register with AGLC and also sign a commercial agreement with AiGC, the Crown corporation that oversees the market. Registration carries a C$50,000 application fee and a C$150,000 annual fee for each site, according to Covers.

Who is in and who is out

Super Group runs several brands in the province, and Apollo Entertainment operates seven casino brands. Stake secured its licence ahead of the deadline. PointsBet, by contrast, is registered with AGLC but has not finished its commercial agreement with AiGC, so its site is not yet live; the company said this week that its Alberta launch is planned for the second half of its financial year.

In poker, PokerStars is leaving the province, at least for now, according to Gaming News Canada. 888poker has launched what it describes as Alberta’s first regulated online poker room, while GGPoker has no current plans to offer poker in the province.

“Alberta’s regulated iGaming market exists to protect Albertans,” said Dan Keene, chief executive of AiGC, adding that he looked forward to working with operators moving away from the “illegal grey market”.

Enforcement to come

The provincial government says it will pursue operators that remain in the unregulated space, although it has not set out specific measures. Cease-and-desist letters and pressure on payment processors have both been floated.

“AGLC has several investigative options available,” said Lynden McBeth, a spokesperson for the regulator, adding that it could not discuss operational techniques publicly in order to protect investigations.

Ontario, which opened its market in 2022, offers one model. The Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario has fined registered suppliers whose content was found on unauthorised sites, including two C$40,000 penalties in May. Whether Alberta follows a similar route, targeting suppliers and payment providers rather than offshore operators directly, will be the next signal of how hard it intends to push.

Hacksaw Group has moved into prediction markets with the launch of a B2B platform that lets operators offer peer-to-peer event trading under their own brands. The Nasdaq Stockholm-listed supplier said on 15 October that the Malta Gaming Authority (MGA) had approved an extension of its existing B2B critical gaming supply licence to add Type 3 gaming services, which authorises it to provide peer-to-peer prediction market services under the Maltese framework.

Hacksaw previously held Type 1 authorisation, which covers casino-style games of chance against the house. Type 3 is the MGA category for games where players compete against each other and the operator takes a commission, the same classification used for poker networks and betting exchanges.

How the platform works

According to the company’s announcement, operators keep ownership of their brands, customer relationships and front-end experience, while Hacksaw supplies the underlying technology and infrastructure. The aim is to spare operators the cost of building and maintaining a prediction market product themselves.

The platform includes what Hacksaw calls a connected volume framework, which pools peer-to-peer participation across its operator network. Liquidity is the central problem for any new exchange-style product, and Hacksaw said the shared pool gives operators access to broader capacity from launch rather than leaving each brand to build its own.

The release did not name launch partners or target jurisdictions. Hacksaw said its existing customers include some of the largest private and state-owned iGaming operators across multiple markets, and cited a Bernstein estimate that annual prediction market trading volumes could reach around $1trn by 2030.

“We believe our existing platform, distribution capabilities and operator relationships position us exceptionally well,” said Ana Vrabic Verdir, group chief executive of Hacksaw Group. Marcus Cordes, operational CEO of Hacksaw Gaming, added: “We have created a solution that enables operators to access prediction market capabilities efficiently and at scale.”

Growth moderates in Q3

The launch comes days after Hacksaw published a preliminary update for the third quarter. The company expects revenue of €57.5m to €58.5m for the three months to 30 September, up about 11% to 12% from €52.0m a year earlier. Adjusted operating profit is expected at €48m to €49m, against €42.1m, with an adjusted EBIT margin of about 83%.

Hacksaw said growth had moderated during the period because of softer market conditions and game performance below that of recent quarters, adding that results in its content business naturally vary from period to period. Its long-term financial targets are unchanged, and the full interim report is due on 3 November.

The preliminary figures leave the prediction markets launch as the clearest new growth line Hacksaw can point to when it reports. The company has spent the past year widening its distribution, recently going live with Sazka Hry in the Czech Republic and extending its partnership with bet365 into Spain.

A crowded field

Hacksaw is the latest established gambling supplier to push into a sector that has grown rapidly in the US through Kalshi and Polymarket, where the legal fight between federally regulated event contracts and state gambling law continues to escalate. Outside the US, operators have so far approached the product through existing betting exchange licences. Matchbook, for example, has begun rolling out prediction markets in the UK.

By routing the product through an MGA peer-to-peer licence and selling it on a white-label basis, Hacksaw is betting that regulated European operators will want prediction markets without the build cost or the US regulatory exposure. How quickly operators sign up, and in which markets regulators accept the product as a form of licensed betting, will determine whether the diversification offsets the slowdown in its core games business.

PointsBet Holdings has warned that its first-half revenue will fall by about 16%, with the Australian-listed bookmaker blaming tighter compliance controls on its most valuable customers and a run of poor results on AFL betting. The company, which is majority owned by Japan’s MIXI, told the Australian Securities Exchange on 13 October that it expects group revenue of approximately A$113m for H1 FY27, down from roughly A$135m in the prior corresponding period.

The half covers the six months from 1 April to 30 September 2026. PointsBet also guided to a Normalised EBITDA loss of between A$6m and A$8m for the period, according to its trading update. Full H1 FY27 results are due on 30 October 2026.

Australia drives the decline

According to the filing, the fall in group revenue was attributable entirely to the Australian business. PointsBet said the result reflected a continuation of two themes it set out at its FY26 annual general meeting in August.

The first is what the company described as the continued strengthening of its compliance standards. It reported a sustained trend of double-digit declines in turnover and revenue against the prior period throughout the half from its highest-value client cohort, which it attributed to proactive compliance actions. PointsBet said it believed these were important decisions to make given an increasingly complex regulatory environment in Australia.

The second is a deliberate push to grow mass-market sports actives, a strategy the company acknowledged can produce short-term volatility in net win margins. PointsBet said it recorded consistent gains in mass-market sports actives, turnover and structural net win margin against the prior period, but these were eroded by negative variance in actual net win margin across the half. It singled out adverse results on key sports in August and September, primarily AFL.

The update did not break out segment revenue for Australia or Canada, and gave no prior-period EBITDA comparison for the April to September 2025 window. Those figures are expected with the half-year accounts at the end of the month.

Alberta still to come

The trading update made no reference to Canada beyond confirming the decline was Australian. At the August AGM, Group CEO Andrew Catterall said PointsBet had migrated its Canadian iGaming platform to Bede in Q1 FY27 and unified its marketing model across both markets. “The combination of these two choices to migrate to Bede and to unify our Marketing model will enable TAM expansion with an efficient entry into the newly regulated province of Alberta, planned for H2 FY27,” he told shareholders, according to the AGM address.

H2 FY27 runs from October 2026 to March 2027, meaning Alberta, where PointsBet opened customer pre-registration in February 2026, has yet to contribute to group revenue. Canada has been the group’s growth engine: in the nine months to 31 March 2026, Canadian revenue rose 13% to A$34.6m, with iGaming net win up 28%, while Australia generated A$152.0m.

MIXI era reporting

The H1 FY27 update is the first full-period market update since PointsBet changed its financial year-end from 30 June to 31 March to align with MIXI, which holds a 66.4% controlling stake following its takeover in 2025. Its FY26 annual report therefore covered only the nine months from July 2025 to March 2026, a period in which group revenue was A$186.6m and Normalised EBITDA was a loss of A$0.8m.

Chairman Brett Paton told the AGM that FY26 had been “a year of significant transition” for the business, covering the move to MIXI ownership, the change in reporting cycle and the appointment of Catterall as Group CEO in February 2026, replacing co-founder Sam Swanell. The company has not provided full-year FY27 guidance.

Trade outlets including SBC News and iGaming Next reported the revenue warning, with the latter noting that the expected EBITDA loss compares unfavourably with the small loss posted across FY26.

What happens next

The warning lands as Australian wagering operators prepare for the federal gambling advertising reform package recently passed by Parliament. Catterall said at the AGM that the post-reform operating model for licensed operators would become “even more complicated and more expensive”, and urged the government to ensure agencies can block illegal offshore operators.

For PointsBet, the 30 October results will show how much of the H1 slide came from the high-value cohort versus AFL results, and whether Canadian growth on the Bede platform is holding up. The timing of the Alberta launch within H2 FY27 is likely to be the key question for investors, as the company leans on Canada to offset a shrinking Australian top line.