March 10, 2025 403z1s
Manitoba’s decade-long partnership with the British Columbia Lottery Corporation (BCLC) has delivered significant online gaming revenue for the province through a dedicated Manitoba-branded version of PlayNow.com. Since launching in 2013, PlayNow has brought in more than $148.8 million in net profits for Manitoba - funds allocated to public programs, responsible gambling initiatives, and community organizations. Yet even with PlayNow’s success, many in the industry point to the ongoing presence of unregulated, offshore betting websites which are accessible across Canada, suggesting that the current model is not capturing the full potential of the online gaming market.
Although British Columbia often touts PlayNow as a “safe” and fully regulated service, the reality is that a large share of gambling in the province still occurs on "grey market" sites that operate outside of government oversight. These unregulated operators neither pay local taxes nor necessarily adhere to the same player safeguards found on government-sponsored platforms. For Manitoba, meanwhile, PlayNow provides a legal alternative but does not necessarily prevent Manitobans from seeking out other, often more diverse, unregulated options online.
Against this backdrop, Ontario has implemented a different model, inviting multiple private operators to become licensed and regulated under a single iGaming framework. In the most recent fiscal year, Ontario’s total online gaming revenue reached $3.003 billion—some of which came from brands that had once operated solely in the "grey market." Had Manitoba been part of that system during 2023–24, we estimated that the province could have collected upwards of $50 million in tax revenues or government share - far suring the roughly $15 million per year that Manitoba has averaged through its agreement with BCLC.
Rather than building its own iGaming authority from the ground up, Manitoba could consider simply “plugging into” Ontario’s infrastructure in much the same way it partnered with BCLC for PlayNow in 2013. This would involve forging an agreement that brings Manitoba-based players under the Ontario iGaming umbrella, where numerous major brands already follow a regulated model and pay a share of their revenues back to the government. Given the popularity of these brands, Manitoba could recoup a significant amount of money now flowing out of the province to unregulated operators, as many major "grey market" brands that serve Manitoba from offshore are live & licensed within the Ontario-only regime.
As was done for the Ontario market launch, "grey market" players located in Manitoba could be quickly migrated to the respective regulated platforms, nearly instantly. Think of all the Manitoba players that exist right now for Canada's top "grey market" sportsbook brand. That brand is licensed in Ontario, and is d widely on television and radio. What if you could snap your fingers and all of a sudden, those "grey market" Manitoba players were now situated within the iGaming Ontario regime, and the bulk of provincial revenue shares from them, flowed back to Manitoba, instead of staying offshore? This is why the $50 million figure is both realistic and achievable: Incredible brands & platforms with large existing Manitoba customer bases are ripe for the picking. Lawmakers and policymakers in Manitoba just need to do the work.
Critics of moving to an Ontario-style model might note that Manitoba’s current arrangement with BCLC has proved stable and manageable. There is a decade of trust invested in PlayNow, along with established responsible gambling measures. However, those gains do not necessarily reflect the size of the total online gaming market, especially as more players discover large, offshore casinos and sportsbooks that heavily across Canada. British Columbia’s experience underscores how even a well-established site like PlayNow can exist alongside a thriving "grey market" that governments have struggled to contain.
For Manitoba, the question becomes whether to stay the course with a partnership that has delivered steady returns, or to capitalize on Ontario’s burgeoning iGaming framework for a potentially larger windfall through establishment of a proper market of legal protect players with self-exclusion programs and consistent regulations.
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