New Brunswick is exploring whether to license private online gambling operators, raising the prospect of a third Canadian province following Ontario and Alberta into a competitive igaming market.

Finance Minister René Legacy confirmed the review in a statement to Brunswick News, saying the “government is exploring options around regulating private online operators”. The Telegraph-Journal first reported the move. No timeline, preferred model or legislation has been announced, and the existing framework remains in place.

Atlantic Lottery’s position

Legal online gambling in New Brunswick is currently offered only through Atlantic Lottery Corporation (ALC), the Crown corporation jointly owned by New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland and Labrador. Opening the market would end that monopoly in the province and could complicate the four-province arrangement under which ALC operates.

ALC has estimated that unregulated gambling websites take more than CA$250m a year out of Atlantic Canada. Provincial budget documents show New Brunswick’s government lottery revenue has fallen by around CA$8m over the past two years, according to reports.

An ALC spokesperson, Greg Weston, said decisions about the region’s gambling framework “ultimately rest with the provincial governments that own the corporation”.

Models on the table

Officials are reviewing how other provinces and jurisdictions regulate the sector. Ontario opened its market to private operators in April 2022 through iGaming Ontario, while Alberta’s regime went live this year, with its grace period for grey-market operators ending on 13 October with around 50 sites live.

Michael Naraine, an associate professor of sport management at Brock University, has suggested that the Atlantic provinces could partner with Quebec to create a larger regulated market. He also pointed to New York’s mobile sports betting model, which limits the number of operators and taxes gross gaming revenue at 51%, as one alternative to Ontario’s open licensing approach.

The Canadian Alliance for Regulated Gaming, which represents operators, has not backed a particular model. Executive director Molly Cormier stressed the importance of oversight, player safeguards and enforcement, and raised concerns about gambling advertising reaching consumers in provinces where operators are not licensed.

What comes next

Several practical questions would follow any decision to open up. The province would need to choose a regulator and a licensing body, settle a tax rate, and decide what role ALC would play as one operator among many, as provincial lotteries in Ontario and Alberta continue to do alongside private licensees. It would also need a plan for the offshore sites already serving New Brunswick players, which in Alberta has meant a defined grace period followed by enforcement against operators that did not apply for a licence.

Premier Susan Holt’s government has made no commitment beyond the review, and any move to license private operators would require new legislation. However, the combination of falling lottery returns and offshore leakage that drove change in Ontario and Alberta is now clearly on the agenda in Fredericton.

For operators already licensed in Ontario and Alberta, a New Brunswick market would be modest in size, with a population of under one million, but it could open the door to a wider Atlantic Canada framework if the other ALC shareholder provinces follow.

Spain’s gambling regulator has launched a test version of its joint deposit limit system, which will cap how much each player can deposit across every licensed online operator combined, alongside a new Player Portal that gives individuals a single view of their gambling activity.

The Directorate General for the Regulation of Gambling (DGOJ), part of the Ministry of Social Rights, Consumer Affairs and Agenda 2030, opened both tools on Wednesday 21 October. The system will be mandatory from late March 2027, when the test phase ends.

How the limits work

By default, every player will be limited to €700 a day, €1,750 a week and €3,300 over any four-week period, counted across all the DGOJ-licensed operators where they hold an account. Until now, Spain’s limits have applied operator by operator, and those per-operator caps of €600 a day, €1,500 a week and €3,000 a month remain in place alongside the new system.

Players can change or remove the joint limits voluntarily, but only through a specific procedure that includes reinforced information about gambling risks. Any change takes three working days to take effect, and a limit can be raised only once every three months. The regulator’s day runs from 06:00 to 06:00, and its week from 06:00 on Tuesday.

Operators must connect to the central system and check it before accepting any deposit. They may not accept a deposit that would breach a player’s joint limit and must tell the player when one is refused. The DGOJ acts as the single verification point, so operators do not exchange player data with one another.

A single view for players

The Player Portal brings together a person’s deposits, stakes, winnings and losses across all authorised Spanish operators, with activity trends and history. Users can see which gambling accounts are registered to their identity, which the regulator says will help spot identity theft, set their own spending and activity alerts, manage their joint limits and download annual activity certificates. Access is free through the government’s Cl@ve digital identity system.

Legal basis and rationale

The framework was created by Royal Decree 520/2026, approved by the Council of Ministers on 23 June and published in the Official State Gazette two days later. It inserts a new Article 36 bis into Royal Decree 1614/2011, which governs licensed online gambling.

The decree’s preamble cites regulator data showing that around a third of active online players in Spain hold accounts with more than one operator, and that roughly 80% of accumulated losses are concentrated among 10% of players. The ministry says the joint limits are aimed squarely at that multi-account group.

The regulator is the data controller for the system, which processes identity details, contact information, the limits each player has set and their deposits. The decree bars the processing of special-category data such as health or biometric information, and requires data to be deleted once its purpose has been fulfilled. DGOJ director general Mikel Arana and Justo Sancho, head of its safe gambling control division, presented the tools to industry at the Gaming in Spain Conference in Madrid on 15 October.

Operators’ association Jdigital has questioned the measure, arguing that it adds complexity for licensed operators to address a minority of players and warning that further restrictions could push customers towards unlicensed sites.

Next steps

The launch comes as the DGOJ works through a broader safer-gambling agenda. Earlier this month the regulator reopened its consultation on risk-detection algorithms, and it has said an impact analysis of the 2020 advertising decree will be published in the coming weeks. For operators, the immediate task is integration: every licensee will need to be connected and checking the central limit before the system becomes binding next spring.

Betsson AB reported record third-quarter revenue on Thursday, with group revenue rising 10% year on year to €326.5m, but profitability moved the other way as EBITDA fell 23% to €63.4m.

The Stockholm-listed operator said organic growth was 8% in the quarter to 30 September, compared with €295.8m in the same period of 2025. Casino did most of the work, with revenue up 14%, while sportsbook revenue rose just 1% as the sportsbook margin slipped to 8.1% from 8.8% a year earlier.

Latin America leads growth

Latin America was again the standout region, with revenue up by more than 50% on the back of Peru and Argentina, according to the company’s interim report. The region overtook Betsson’s other markets earlier this year to become its largest by revenue, and its contribution has continued to climb since.

The quarter was also the first to include Rhino Entertainment Group, the acquisition of which Betsson completed in early August. The company said the business was consolidated during the period and contributed positively to both revenue and earnings. At the end of September Betsson also launched its own brand in Belgium, replacing betFIRST.

Betsson said it ended the quarter with a record number of active customers.

The third quarter also benefited from the FIFA World Cup. When it reported second-quarter results in July, Betsson said average daily revenue in the first two weeks of July was 14% above the daily average for the whole of the third quarter of 2025, a lift it linked to the tournament. Second-quarter revenue had grown just 2% to €310.2m, so the 10% rise in the third quarter marks a clear acceleration.

Margins under pressure

The revenue record did not carry through to the bottom line. EBITDA came in at €63.4m against €82.5m a year earlier, taking the EBITDA margin down to 19.4% from 27.9%. Operating profit (EBIT) fell 31% to €46.1m, a margin of 14.1% compared with 22.6% in the third quarter of 2025.

Net profit almost halved to €28.2m from €50.1m, equal to €0.19 per share against €0.34. Operating cash flow was €54.5m, down from €64.8m, and the group’s net cash position stood at €98.3m, compared with €220.0m a year earlier.

Over the first nine months of the year, revenue rose 3% to €922.1m while EBITDA fell 30% to €171.8m.

President and chief executive Pontus Lindwall struck an upbeat note despite the earnings decline, saying in the report that “we are well positioned to return to earnings growth”. The company described the start to October as positive but did not give trading figures for the current quarter.

Product and market activity

During the quarter Betsson launched Gates of Inter, the third sponsorship-based casino game developed exclusively for the group, and added new sportsbook features including extra-time betting markets in football and team and player pages for major European fixtures.

Investors welcomed the top-line performance, with Betsson’s B shares rising more than 6% in early trading in Stockholm, according to Investing.com. Trade coverage, including from InterGame, highlighted casino as the main driver of the revenue record.

What it means

The results underline the split now running through much of the listed European operator sector: revenue growth driven by Latin American and casino exposure, set against heavier costs, tax and integration work that are compressing margins. With Rhino now consolidated and the Belgian brand switch complete, Betsson’s fourth-quarter numbers will give the clearest view yet of whether Lindwall’s promised return to earnings growth is under way.