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COMMENTARY: Online sports betting as addictive as VLTs

The province of Ontario was the first jurisdiction in Canada to offer a private online gambling (sorry, gaming) market in April 2022. Alberta has now followed suit and officially launched its own regulated online sports betting market. Will Atlantic Canada be next?

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There is certainly money to be made. Ontario added roughly $469 million in online gambling profits to its governmental coffers for the 2023-24 period. And you can bet that Alberta has its eyes firmly fixed on the potential for proportionate dollar amounts flowing into its provincial treasury.

What strikes me are the obvious similarities between video lottery terminals (VLTs) and online sports betting. Same governments (and not the mafia) trying to separate people from their money and the attendant damaging outcomes – but with different technology. Even the political calculations and implications are a carbon copy of the politics of VLTs.

I vividly recall a government official from the then-Nova Scotia Alcohol and Gaming Authority telling me that VLTs – the crack cocaine of gambling ­­– were operating on old technology that would eventually be overtaken. Little did I know that the new........

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