00:00Let's get to north of the border here in Alberta.
00:03What could the latest be there?
00:05Yeah, so this is, you know, kind of the one bright spot right now, aside from Missouri, you know, which will launch later this year in sports betting launches.
00:14I mean, Alberta will launch at some point soon, whether it's later this year or early next year.
00:19That is the question.
00:20And, you know, last year we had the minister, the minister who kind of leads the that regulatory area say, you know, we can launch sports betting in a similar model to Ontario.
00:31So completely open sports betting and online casino commercial market by the end of 2024.
00:37Well, 2024 came and went.
00:39Nothing happened.
00:41Finally, Dale Nally did introduce some legislation to the Alberta Parliament.
00:47And that did get through.
00:48And it is still pretty fairly open.
00:51It does create the agency that will oversee and license the market.
00:56So that, you know, agency has to now figure out the fine details of the industry and then, you know, solicit applications, get them, work through those, figure it all out.
01:10And then we can go ahead and launch.
01:12Again, you know, this is kind of a wait and see, obviously, of how long that's going to take.
01:20But it is certainly longer than the 2024 timeline that he initially put on it.
01:24We'll see it.
01:25You know, if it does end up anything remotely like.
01:29Wide open market.
01:31The revenue is coming in now from there.
01:33I think there's more than 40, nearly 50 operators of online sports betting and casino.
01:38So huge.
01:40And operators seem to be pretty excited about Alberta.
01:43You know, they've long said that, you know, Ontario has the best regulatory framework out there.
01:49A lot of sports betting company executives have said this.
01:52Well, now they're excited because Alberta is going to model it after that.
01:57And they're saying that the, you know, the demographics are great.
02:01Well, it is, you know, a tiny fraction of the size of Ontario.
02:05It is the highest GDP per capita province and the highest spending GDP per capita on gambling at the casinos in the state.
02:18So there's a lot of optimism from operators out there that this could be a pretty, you know, rewarding state to be active in.
