With Ontario becoming the latest Canadian province to join in on online gambling, many have been concerned with whether or not their presence will impact the bottom line of brick and mortar casinos. Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation spokesman Tony Bitonti noted the OLG examined other jurisdictions in Canada and Europe who made similar forays into online gaming, and saw no impact on local casinos.
In fact, the market that the OLG is going after is the near 500,000 Ontarians who currently gamble on grey market online sites, Bitonti said. The hope is for the OLG to grab a piece of that number by offering a safe, trustworthy, government-regulated site for gamblers. Bitonti also said, “All other sites that offer online gaming are based off-shore and do not return profits to the people of Ontario.”
The site, PlayOLG has a goal of bringing in $375 million over the next five years. Bitonti said he and the corporation were pleased with the numbers since the January 8 launch, but would not give out exact numbers due to competition with the grey market sites.
