Manitoba puts bets on Internet gaming

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This article was published 07/04/2012 (5252 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

This time next year, you’ll be able to play online poker with the house being the Province of Manitoba.

The Selinger government said Thursday it will partner with the British Columbia Lottery Corp. to offer regulated online gaming, with the province expecting to earn about $17 million in new revenue by 2018.

“We don’t view this as an expansion of gaming,” Infrastructure and Transportation Minister Steve Ashton said, explaining an estimated $37 million leaves the province each year through gamers in Manitoba playing on one or more of the estimated 2,000 offshore Internet gambling sites. Ashton is the minister responsible for Manitoba Lotteries.

“People are gaming online as we speak. The difference, with this, is they’ll have a regulated Manitoba option. It will have all the security features and the money will stay here in the province.”

The province and the Manitoba Lotteries Corp. have been eyeballing online gaming for about three years, watching how other provinces are approaching it. B.C. has offered it since 2004, and Quebec and Ontario say they will offer it soon.

However, Alberta, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland and Labrador have rejected it, although the Atlantic provinces allow their residents to buy lottery tickets online. Officials in Saskatchewan said this week they’re exploring getting into online gaming.

Ashton said Manitoba’s foray into online gambling will be cushioned by two things — five per cent of online gaming net income will go towards responsible-gaming initiatives and 15 per cent will go toward expanded provincial programs for aboriginal sport and recreation. The province normally spends two per cent of Manitoba Lotteries’ revenue on gambling treatment.

Trina Larsen, director of prevention and early intervention with the Addictions Foundation of Manitoba, said it’s too early to predict how many more people will develop problems with the provincially sanctioned online gaming.

“Opportunities to gamble online already exist,” she said. Only two per cent of AFM clients have said they gamble online. VLTs and slot machines pose a bigger problem.

Ashton said Manitoba’s online site, a portal on the B.C. site, will also have safeguards in place to reduce underage gambling.

“Quite frankly, I think most Manitobans would say it makes sense to keep as much of the gaming revenue here, with a regulated site where it’s going to benefit Manitobans (rather) than going offshore to sites where who knows who benefits,” Ashton said.

Progressive Conservative lotteries critic Cliff Graydon said the timing of the NDP’s decision on online gambling is suspicious in that they did it before the house goes back into session April 17.

Graydon also said it appears the NDP was pushed into online gaming, after taking so long to make a decision, to help pay down the province’s $1.1-billion budget deficit.

“It seems Mr. Selinger has painted himself into a position where he’d rather buy a 6/49 ticket to deal with the budget deficit than use common sense,” Graydon said.

The introduction of online gaming comes as Manitoba Lotteries plans to introduce new video lottery terminals this year.

According to the Crown corporation’s 2010-11 annual report, while it earned $43.5 million more in overall revenue than in the year before, VLT revenue was $10 million less than in the year before.

The plan calls for unplugging aging VLTs, introduced in 2004, and installing newer ones to attract players back to the machines.

bruce.owen@freepress.mb.ca