The Spelinspektionen, Sweden’s gambling regulator, has published information about the Swedish gambling market’s performance in the second quarter of the year. The period saw the authority’s licensees collectively record a turnover of SEK 6.7 billion (around $602,000), which translates to a slight year-on-year decrease.

The reported preliminary figure represents a decrease of a little bit over 1% compared to Q2 2022. The Swedish market continues to be fairly stable, as attested by the overall trends.

The Spelinspektionen also published results about the individual performance of various gambling verticals. Commercial online gambling and sports betting, for example, was the primary contributor to the total turnover. The vertical earned almost SEK 4.2 million ($377,500) in Q3 2023. This number is nearly identical to the one recorded in Q1 2023 and slightly lower than the one recorded in Q2 2022.

The state lottery and slot games collectively earned SEK 1.4 million ($125,800). The figure represents a slight quarter-on-quarter increase and a small year-on-year decrease. The net turnover of Casino Cosmopol, meanwhile, was around SEK 126,000 ($11,300).

Games for general purposes and national lotteries, on the other hand, brought in SEK 896,000 ($80,500). Community games and hall bingo, meanwhile, recorded a turnover of SEK 48,000 ($4,300). Finally, land-based commercial gaming earned SEK 51,000 ($4,583).

The Spelinspektionen concluded that by the end of the second quarter of the year, around 95,000 people were excluded from gambling via Sweden’s exclusion program, Spelpaus.se. This number represents a 1.4% year-on-year increase, the regulator pointed out.

Spelinspektionen’s Work Came Under Review

Two weeks ago, the Swedish National Audit Office announced its intention to launch a probe into Spelinspektionen, evaluating the regulator’s work, actions, strategies and effectiveness in achieving the objectives set by the Swedish national gambling policy.

One of the main concerns in Sweden continues to be the low channelization rates. Experts say that only 77% of the gamblers in the country play with licensed operators. This means that almost a quarter of the Swedes prefer offshore companies, despite the numerous risks associated with the black market.

By probing the Spelinspektionen’s work, the Swedish National Audit Office hopes to find valuable insights and devise plans to make a change.

In other Sweden-related news, Svenska Spel, Sweden’s state-owned online casino operator, recently donated $377,000 to five studies researching gambling harm. The move reaffirmed the operator’s desire to mitigate harm and promote responsible gambling. 

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Ontario iGaming has released a market report for the first quarter of 2023, and online casinos continue to hammer online single-event sports betting in the free commercial market. More than 80% of the action (83%) and over 70% of the nascent market’s revenues came from casino gaming rather than sports betting.

The numbers starkly contrast with some of the projected estimates coming out of the Canadian province before the market opening in early 2022. Those numbers seem to have all but disappeared from the news, being overwhelmed by the sheer reality of what it is in fact, that Canadians like to bet on casino games a lot more than they care to bet on sports.

iGaming Ontario Fiscal Year Began April 1

When referring to first quarter numbers, the information relates to (Q1) of the 2023-24 fiscal year which ran from April 1 through June 30, 2023.

Outside and casual observers might also be surprised which sports got the most action with basketball leading hockey by orders of magnitude. Sports bettors were “turned off” by betting ads all over television and other media and the country hasn’t won a Stanley Cup in ice hockey for three decades.

That being said, online casinos dominated the money story with over 5x as much in wagers ($11.6B vs $2.B) than sports betting but operator win was much less as a percentage of turnover, as is to be expected, when comparing the amount of money players left on the tables, in the virtual slots, and on the book. Casinos produced $392M in revenue as opposed to the $182M that betting generated.

The market currently has 71 gambling sites in operation, five less than at the end of the year but has picked up one additional operator. The number of active accounts has shrunken a bit as well to less than one million.

However, it must be kept in mind that it does not mean there are a million online gamblers in the province that play at regulated, taxed, and licensed websites as each account is counted separately.

The minimum number of participants could be as few as 12,958 or as many as 920,000. Among other reasons, since many operators only allow one bonus across all of their websites, it’s highly unlikely any but a small handful of customers have over 50 separate accounts, but it’s also a stretch to think that nearly anyone has less than half a dozen – making the probable number of actual active players fall somewhere on the lower end of the spectrum, but still in the hundreds of thousands.

The average spend per active player account during Q1 was $197.

Money wagered on slots was more than that wagered on all table games combined, and here again the apples and oranges must be sorted out. Slots spins happen more rapidly than table game bets in succession so the games will see a lot more betting, however, table game bets – both virtual and live dealer casino bets, are usually larger. Regardless, slots made up some 48% of all wagers while live casino games made up about 32% of all gaming wagers with virtual random number generator-based table games accounting for at least 8% of the remainder while peer-to-peer bingo games made up the rest.

This quarterly report was the first time that game-by-game volumes could be extracted from an iGaming Ontario report.

First Full-Year Numbers Released in Tandem

Following is a breakdown of the 2022/2023 fiscal year numbers (FY2022-23 – April 4, 2022, to March 31, 2023) as provided by the authority.

• Last year, casino games, including slots, live and computer-based table games as well as peer-to-peer bingo, accounted for nearly $28B (78%) of total wagers and $940M (67%) of gaming revenue.
• Betting, including traditional sports, esports, proposition, and novelty bets accounted for $7B (20%) of total wagers and $433M (31%) of gaming revenue last year.
• P2P poker accounted for $992M (3%) of total wagers and $40M (3%) of gaming revenue last year.

None of the numbers above in any section include Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp. (OLG) information, which will be released at a later date. As such, it is not possible to directly infer any amount of direct losses or cannibalization to the long-existing Crown Corporation public/private partnership operation which formerly ran a monopoly on Canadian-licensed casino games through its PlayOLG website.

As always, Canadians in Ontario and other provinces are free to bet at offshore casinos as well – with those numbers still obscured by a lack of centralized regulatory reporting in jurisdictions such as Malta or any reporting from licensing jurisdictions like Curacao which handle those operators.

The Kahnawake Gaming Commission does not provide market reports either.

“As part of its commitment to sharing aggregate revenue and market insight reports, iGO intends to continue releasing, at minimum, a market report every quarter,” iGO said Wednesday.

Source: iGaming Ontario’s FY 2023-24 Q1 Market Performance Report, iGaming Ontario, July 19, 2023

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Circa Sports Illinois has received its license to operate in the state, marking a significant milestone in the eagerly awaited launch of legal sports betting in Prairie State. The Nevada-based sportsbook operator obtained its sports wagering management services provider license from the Illinois Gaming Board on April 27 in Chicago, granting it the authority to offer online and in-casino betting services. 

Anticipation Builds as Circa Sports Prepares for Late August Launch in Illinois

This approval positions Circa Sports Illinois as one of the eight licensed sportsbook operators in the state. With this crucial step complete, the operator is now on track to debut in the third quarter of 2023, specifically targeting a late August launch, just in time for the start of the football season. 

Circa Sports has partnered with Full House Resorts to provide both retail and online sports betting platforms for the upcoming American Place Casino. As the main casino is still under development, Circa Sports will be temporarily located at “The Temporary” in Waukegan until the completion of the probationary stage required by the Illinois Gaming Board to receive a nonrestricted casino license.

The sportsbook’s launch is eagerly anticipated, as it promises to offer a diverse range of betting options on various sporting events. In addition to the sportsbook, American Place Casino plans to enhance its offerings by expanding operating hours and increasing the number of table games available to patrons. 

The introduction of the sportsbook is expected to attract a larger customer base and contribute to the overall lively ambience at American Place Casino. 

Illinois Considers Legalizing Online Casinos

Circa Sports partnered with Full House Resorts to enter the Illinois sports wagering market back in May 2022. Illinois marks the fourth state where Circa has expanded its operations, following Nevada, Iowa, and Colorado. 

The initial agreement term is eight years, with the potential for two four-year extensions. The CEO of Circa, Derek Stevens, expressed excitement about bringing their market-leading solutions to Illinois, highlighting the state’s status as a rapidly growing market in the sports betting industry. 

Meanwhile, in February Illinois State Senator Cristina Castro introduced bill SB1656 to legalize online casinos in the state. The proposed legislation would allow casinos and racetracks to apply for internet gaming licenses, with a $250,000 cost per license. 

The bill set a 15% tax rate on adjusted gross revenue and included provisions for responsible gambling and diversity efforts. While a previous attempt to legalize online casinos failed, the success of sports betting in Illinois has made lawmakers more receptive. 

The introduction of online gambling could provide a much-needed revenue stream, but it may face challenges due to existing tax revenue from video gaming terminals and the upcoming launch of new casino venues.

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Ontario Canada’s liberalized open market model for online casino and sports gambling has been in operation for a year now and it has become a fiercely competitive market. European operator CoolBet got in on the first day and pulled out of the market in March, less than one year into the endeavor.

Prior to the market’s official launch on April 4, 2022, Ontarians either gambled at a local casino, at Play OLG online, or they went offshore to play at a site licensed in Malta, Gibraltar, the Isle of Man, Alderney, or even the Caribbean jurisdiction of Curacao.

Now, according to a survey by Ipsos, the bulk of players are all happily spinning away at regulated sites available in the province thanks to a collaboration between iGaming Ontario (iGO), the Government of Ontario, and the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO). The survey found that over 85% of those who gambled online in the last three months gambled at a regulated site.

From 70% offshore to 85% Province-Regulated?

However, that top-line number can’t tell the whole story. The Attorney General released a report on July 06, 2021, stating that 70% of all online gambling was done at “unregulated, grey market websites, with limited, if any, consumer protection and responsible gaming measures,” and that the assumed flight of capital was some billion dollars a year. If all of that gambling activity seems to have come home to roost, the open competitive online gambling market must be a huge success – at least revenue-wise for the province.

However, as is often the case when studies are commissioned by stakeholders, not all of the important numbers are easy to find. One of the major arguing points for regulated online gambling was the potential to reap revenues from single-event online sportsbetting in the province which the AG report estimated to be a $14 billion-a-year industry in Canada. It’s absolutely unclear if the Ontario market has captured even a sliver of that number.

Some reports following on the heels of the Ipsos survey results suggest that province-regulated online gambling has almost entirely displaced the previous practice of placing bets offshore, but that is not quite true on its face.

The AGCO seems to be taking a more realistic tack in its conclusions about the first year. Registrar and CEO of the AGCO, Tom Mungham said: “A key objective in this first year has been to move Ontario players from playing on unregulated sites to the regulated market so that they would benefit from high standards of operator and game integrity, fairness and player protections including responsible gambling safeguards. Although there’s still much work to be done, we’re pleased to see such a substantial shift towards gaming on regulated sites so far, and everything that it represents for players and for the province.”

According to Ipsos:

85.3% of respondents who have gambled online in Ontario over the past three months report having wagered on a regulated website.

14.7% of respondents who have gambled online in Ontario over the past three months report having wagered only on unregulated websites.

Further, among the 85.3% who are using regulated websites, Ipsos’ study found that 19.5% have wagered on a combination of regulated and unregulated websites.

These numbers tell us that over 30% of active players in Ontario still use offshore gambling sites.

Another study was done by PrimeOnline LTD, a SkillOnNet operator with the branded Ontario online casinos Spin Genie.ca, the holder of an Ontario iGaming license in good standing. That study found that 43% of players in Ontario began gambling online in the last year (since the launch) and about a quarter of players (24%) had only been playing for six months or less.

The aforementioned survey used roughly the same methodology and had about the same margin of error and confidence interval as the Ipsos survey.

How Many Know if They are Gambling at a Licensed Site?

Somewhat striking among the findings and begging more detail to the actual questions asked in the Ipsos survey, the Prime survey noted that less than three-quarters (72%) of players queried were even aware that OLG.ca (the official Ontario Lottery website) is regulated and they believe that other major websites are unregulated – but – players are most likely to believe that whichever website they visit is indeed regulated.

The parts of the survey released to the public did provide some demographic information which can tell us a little bit about the most common type of online gambler in Ontario.

During the last 3 months, Ontarians who have placed real money bets online are overwhelmingly male (68.1%), between the ages of 19 and 34 (45.8%), have earned a University Degree+ (39.5%), and make less than $75,000 per year (54.9%).

There are 45 operators with about 70 live real money gambling websites in Ontario. AGCO has certified over 5,000 games for online use.

According to a CBC News report posted on Jan 17, 2022, a “Private & Confidential” report compiled for the government stated that the province could lose more than $2.5b in revenue as players migrate from brick-and-mortar gameplay to online only. In decades of reviewing such doom and gloom assessments, none have proved true to date.

Jeffrey Haas, senior vice-president of DraftKings Inc. made the correct call on that report stating: “People who are playing in online casinos and online sportsbooks and online poker rooms will continue to do so, except they’re going to go from playing offshore to onshore,” according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. “And anybody who continues to walk into real casinos in order to play games there will continue to do so.”

Source: Ontario iGaming Market Channelization (PDF), Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario, April 3, 2023

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