When Martha Otton announced in the summer of 2024 that she was retiring as Executive Director of iGaming Ontario, there was thinking among different sectors of the province’s regulated igaming market that the organization’s Chief of Staff, Mitch Davidson, would be a great fit to move into the leadership role.

Instead, Davidson decided in August to get back into the policy game, this time as Vice President, Policy for Canadian public affairs firm Enterprise Canada. The former Director of Policy for the Premier’s Office was our guest on the latest episode of the Gaming News Canada Show presented by Bede Gaming.

Your humble host tried to cover with the new father the gamut of topics in the business of sports betting and online gaming, Canadian style, including:

• Davidson’s decision, after speaking with some gaming-related businesses, to join Enterprise;
• The work done at iGO under the leadership of Otton and him to launch Ontario’s open private-sector market in April 2022, and the success story that is the Ontario model;
• Why the implementation of a centralized self-exclusion program, identified as a priority by operators, has taken so long (new iGO president and CEO Joseph Hiller told us on the GNCS at the beginning of the month he expects the program to be launched in the first half of 2026);
• Other priorities for iGO moving forward;
• His reaction to last week’s decision by the Court of Appeal for Ontario to go along with reviving pay-to-play daily fantasy contests and expanding online poker games (Davidson writes about the court ruling and liquidity in his latest post on The Policy Shop);
• What happens with regulated gaming beyond Ontario, including Alberta.

Davidson also explained the motivation for the creation of The Policy Shop on Substack, a weekly, well-reasoned deep dive into the issues that matter most to Canadians these days and – importantly - offering potential solutions.

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Count the Canadian Gaming Association among the entities in the business of sports betting and other forms of gambling that are riding the industry’s fast-moving train these days.

Hence, our rationale for bringing back on the Gaming News Canada Show, CGA president and CEO Paul Burns for a rapid-round episode of the podcast. Burns first addressed last week’s decisionby the Court of Appeal for Ontario with regards to expanding peer-to-peer play to international jurisdictions and the potential opportunities around the court’s ruling if there are no appeals filed over the next 20-something days.

Next up was a segment on Bill S-211 – aka the National Framework on Sports Betting Advertising Act – passing first reading in the House of Commons. That led to Burns walking your humble host through the CGA’s recently released Code for Responsible Gaming Advertising, put together in collaboration with the association’s membership and with Ad Standards – Canada and scheduled to be put into effect at the beginning of the new year.

Burns also spoke about the CGA’s request for an exemption from the cash limits in Bill C-2, which awaits passage in the aforementioned House of Commons. The section of greatest concern to the association includes this clause:

136 The Act is amended by adding the following after section 77.‍4:

Offence — cash payments, donations or deposits of $10,000 or more

77.‍5 (1) Every person or entity that is engaged in a business, a profession or the solicitation of charitable financial donations from the public commits an offence if the person or entity accepts a cash payment, donation or deposit of $10,000 or more in a single transaction or in a prescribed series of related transactions that total $10,000 or more.

The CGA’s head honcho also gave us a few thoughts about the recent sports betting/match-event fixing scandals in the NBA, UFC and Major League Baseball.

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To borrow a line from The Roastmaster Jeff Ross, the only thing John Levy has ever sugarcoated has been his morning bowl of Corn Flakes (Ed’s note. . . our tongue was securely fastened in our cheek while tapping the keyboard).

Levy was his usual candid self in his latest conversation with Steve McAllister on the Gaming News Canada Show presented by Bede Gaming. The original founder of Headline Sports – which spawned theScore, Hardcore Sports Radio and theScore Bet – had lots to say about the news last week of ESPN and Penn Entertainment ending their 10-year agreement, and the end of ESPN Bet.

Levy, who sold Score Gaming and Media to Penn in the summer of 2021 and left the company in 2024 along with his sons Aubrey, Benjie and Noah, discussed the failures that led to the demise of ESPN Bet and the breakup of Penn and Barstool Sports in the summer of 2023 (we asked Levy if he had any interest in pulling a Dave Portnoy and reacquiring theScore – he answered). He also talked about Penn’s problems in the digital gaming business both in the U.S. and Canada and had some thoughts about the comments of Penn CEO Jay Snowden last week that the company may have interest in the retail casino business here in the Great White North.

The conversation also included the relationship between sports betting operators and sports media companies. And, some two weeks after a riveting World Series, Levy trumpeted theScore’s 10-year partnership deal with the Blue Jays that was announced on the same day Ontario’s open gambling market opened in April 2022.

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On a new episode of the Gaming News Canada Show presented by Bede Gaming, Adam Rosenberg and CJ Buskey joined our humble host with some news of the breaking sort around their newish business Handigraphs.

After launching a dashboard back in June to lend a hand to bettors of baseball, Rosenberg and Buskey will start this week to offer NHL data/analytics/metrics/numbers/etc. to lovers of puck. The two co-founders, who also do some moonlighting as co-hosts of the Dads Bet Baseball pod, talked about taking their passion for baseball and spreadsheets and turning it into a business. Buskey and Rosenberg also let us know they were ahead of the curve when it came to the 2025 edition of your Toronto Blue Jays and their wonderful run to their first World Series appearance since 1993.

We asked the co-owners about the delay in launching their hockey product a month into the NHL regular season, and how the information being provided on Handigraphs will lend a hand to bettors wishing to lay a loonie or two on prop bets. Speaking of which, Rosenberg – whose work in the gaming industry prior to becoming a branding, communications and marketing consultant included stops at The Action Network and Better Collective – provided some thoughts and layers on the push in some corners these days to ban prop betting in the regulated North American industry. The noise around that debate became louder over the weekend as Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz are both facing legal trouble amidst allegations of rigging pitches.

Finally, we asked both Buskey and Rosenberg if Blue Jay fans can expect another sensational summer and fall in 2026.

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Some 50 days since joining iGaming Ontario as the president/CEO of the conductor and manager of the province’s competitive sports betting and online gambling market, Joseph Hillier was our guest on the Gaming News Canada Show presented by Bede Gaming.

Hillier, who was introduced as Martha Otton’s success at the end of August and joined iGO in early September, talked about the process that led him to accept the position and leave the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario after 19 months as the AGCO’s chief strategy officer and corporate secretary. And how he can parlay his experience at the AGCO, and in the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General during the time the province’s private sector-driven igaming market was created around the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

We also asked the new boss about the first weeks in his new office and his priorities, which we highlighted in the newsletter just days before Hillier’s start date – including the implementation of improved technology (especially with regards to data collection and reporting mechanisms), a long-awaited centralized self-exclusion program and improved protocols around anti-money laundering.

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On the Monday morning after a somewhat-chaotic week in the businesses of sports, sports betting and gambling, we reconvened the media roundtable for a new episode of the Gaming News Canada Show presented by Bede Gaming.

Covers gaming industry beat reporter Geoff Zochodne, Steve Ruddock of the Straight to the Point newsletter and Gaming News Canada newsletter editor Dave Briggs joined your humble host for a rather lengthy conversation. Much of the focus was on the ongoing investigation by the FBI into illegal sports betting and allegations of rigged poker games involving the mafia that have so far led to the arrests of Miami Heat player Terry Rozier, Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups and former NBA player/assistant coach Damon Jones. The reactions across the sports and gambling industries, the media coverage, a bipartisan invitation from the U.S. Congress for NBA commissioner Adam Silver to come to D.C., and what regulators and operators could/should do were among the topics discussed.

The panel also spent time weighing in on the NHL’s new partnership agreement with prediction market firms Kalshi and Polymarket, which continue to butt heads with legal gaming operators and advocates, and regulators in the U.S. of A.

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Some two years ago, Quarter4 co-founder Kelly Brooks received a phone call from the CEO of FairPlay Sports Media (the business formerly known as Oddschecker Global Media), Stuart Simms, who wanted to explore acquiring the Waterloo, ON sports data/analytics/prediction company.

When the sale was completed and announced in January 2024, Brooks became FairPlay’s Chief Product Officer and co-founder Danijela Covic began the next chapter of his career in the U.S. In March, Brooks decided it was time to move on from FairPlay, so we’ve been wanting to catch up with one of the first people we met in the gaming industry.

Mission accomplished, as the Guelph entrepreneur and mom returned to the Gaming News Canada Show presented by Bede Gaming for a chin wag on a number of topics, including:

- Her support and mentorship around startups these days, and what’s next for Brooks;

- Being immersed in artificial intelligence when Quarter4 was launched in 2019, how that technology has evolved, and building a company during the COVID-19 pandemic;

- The back story on being acquired by FairPlay and enjoying her time as CPO for the UK business;

- The ongoing innovation around sports data and the collaboration between companies doing business in the same space;

- Quarter4’s place as a member of the gaming ecosystem in the early days of Ontario’s regulated sports betting and online gaming market;

- Being a woman in the gambling industry;

- Lessons she's learned and is passing along to young(er) entrepreneurs.

And more.

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For more than three decades, Colin Cole-Johnson has worked for some of the biggest brands in the global gaming industry. . . . Ladbrokes, William Hill and Entain. For more than three and half years now, Cole-Johnson has led the Bede Gaming business.

For the first time, Bede’s chief executive officer appeared on a podcast, joining Steve McAllister on the latest episode of the Gaming News Canada Show presented by Bede Gaming. Among the topics covered during their conversation:

- What motivated Cole-Johnson to get into the business of gaming in the 1990s and the path that led him to Bede.

- The focus of today’s Bede business, including its partnership with OLG.

- Bede’s shared industry with the major players across the industry in landing more business here in Canada.

- The company’s decision to recently join the North American Association of State & Provincial Lotteries.

- The ongoing pursuit of new products, among them Bede’s recent launch of its Tournaments platform, and the continued search for more gamification offerings to customers.

- Cole-Johnson also answered our question about the balance of exploiting people power and the power of artificial intelligence in a highly competitive environment.

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