LYNN MOORE, The Gazette November 20, 2010
Loto-Quebec's controversial online gambling site went live yesterday morning. As of Dec. 1, registered adult Quebecers will be able to wager up to $9,999 per week on a variety of games, including the wildly popular Texas Hold 'Em poker. Between 10,000 and 20,000 Quebecers are expected to be gambling on the Espacejeux.comsite by Christmas. The site should generate about $50 million in new revenue for Quebec in 2012, according to provincial and Loto officials. Although Loto-Quebec revenues have dipped in recent years -and several initiatives have flagged or failed -the $50 million is not a game-changer. For the three-month period ending June 28, Loto-Quebec reported consolidated revenues of $925 million.The new revenue stream is simply an added bonus to fulfilling Loto-Quebec's mandate, CEO Alain Cousineau said yesterday.The key reason for the move online is to pull players from about 2,000 so-called illegal gambling sites available to Quebecers to a more protected environment.
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Loto-Quebec's controversial online gambling site went live yesterday morning. As of Dec. 1, registered adult Quebecers will be able to wager up to $9,999 per week on a variety of games, including the wildly popular Texas Hold 'Em poker. Between 10,000 and 20,000 Quebecers are expected to be gambling on the Espacejeux.comsite by Christmas. The site should generate about $50 million in new revenue for Quebec in 2012, according to provincial and Loto officials. Although Loto-Quebec revenues have dipped in recent years -and several initiatives have flagged or failed -the $50 million is not a game-changer. For the three-month period ending June 28, Loto-Quebec reported consolidated revenues of $925 million.The new revenue stream is simply an added bonus to fulfilling Loto-Quebec's mandate, CEO Alain Cousineau said yesterday.The key reason for the move online is to pull players from about 2,000 so-called illegal gambling sites available to Quebecers to a more protected environment.---
The Atlantic Lottery Corp., and the British Columbia Lottery Corp., were supposed to be part of Canada's first government-sanctioned foray into the highly-profitable end of the gambling pool -live, interactive, round-the-clock poker games. But, since that pact was announced in February, the premiers of Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador have pulled out of the project, saying they don't want to expose their citizens to online gambling. Loto-Quebec will partner with the B.C. Lottery Corp., creating a joint platform for poker offerings. The joint platform, located in Montreal, is provided by G2, a subsidiary of GTECH with customer account management software designed by OpenBet Ltd., which is also supplying some of the cyber table games.Only Quebec adults whose identities have been verified will be able to gamble at the various "table games" on the Espacejeux site, just as only B.C. adults can gamble on that province's online site which now offers only table games. But once the common platform is up and running, Quebec gamblers can join their B.C. counterparts at the virtual poker tables. (more)
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