Gaming News Canada Show

• Brand Building at OLG: Maxine Chapman on Gaming, Sports & Strategy

  When Ontario’s open, legal online gambling industry opened its doors in the spring of April 2022, folks around the business of sports wagering and igaming wondered how arrival of a highly competitive industry would impact the Ontario Lottery & Gaming Corporation. Well, as OLG leadership has acknowledged over the past three-plus years, the new kids on the block forced the corporation to get its act together when it came to digital gaming. That race to keep up with the Joneses resulted in a rising-tide-lifts-all-boats scenario. Some of the credit for the growth of OLG’s gaming products can be attributed to the hiring in June 2022 of long-time Canadian and global branding/marketing executive Maxine Chapman as OLG’s vice president, brand and marketing officer. Chapman, who was honoured in February by Strategy Magazine as one of its Marketers of the Year, has deftly juggled OLG’s many brands and partnerships with advertising/marketing/PR agencies and organizations such as Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment around its Bring Home The Win masterbrand. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pW7AWLDq57s The career of the brand/marketing maven, which began at OLG in the early 1990s has included tenures with Coca-Cola, the Vancouver and London Olympics, Cineplex and Manulife. We talked all about those stops – and her work across sports, entertainment and gaming - as Chapman made her maiden appearance on the Gaming News Canada Show. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• Betty’s Rise: From Ontario Launch to Global Ambitions

  In the spring of 2022, Chavdar Dimitrov left Bede Gaming after almost nine years to join forces with Justin Park and launch Betty. Some nine months later, Betty unveiled its product in Ontario’s regulated gambling marketplace. Today, the company touts more than 39,000 customers and recently nailed down a $15 million credit facility to grow its business, including plans to launch in Alberta when the province is ready to raise the curtain on its open sports wagering and igaming industry. Dimitrov joined us from his office in Sofia, Bulgaria for a new episode of the Gaming News Canada Show. In addition to sharing his story on his journey through the gaming industry and creating Betty with Park, Betty’s CEO also spoke about the company’s success in the highly-competitive Ontario industry, a customer base that is split evenly today between men and women, and Park’s recent comment about Betty becoming the “McDonald’s of icasino” with its plans to “transform Betty into a global powerhouse. . . through a decentralized franchise model”. We also asked Dimitrov for his perspectives on addressing customers’ needs, what makes an engaging, successful product that is rewarded with loyal customers, and creating a positive work environment for employees in the post-pandemic world. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• Inside Canada’s Gaming Integrity Push

  It has been a fortnight and more since Paul Burns has been our guest on the Gaming News Canada Show. So given the various happenings around the Canadian gambling industry since his last appearance at the beginning of 2025, we asked Paul Burns to join us once again. With apologies to the late James Stewart and Frank Capra, Mr. Burns went to Ottawa earlier this month for the Council of Europe Workshop on the Macolin Convention gathering, which included panel conversations featuring the CGA head honcho, Dave Phillips and Doug Hood from the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario, and Sportradar’s integrity services lead Jim Brown weighing in on the province’s regulated sports betting industry’s work to combat match fixing. During our conversation, Burns told us that the collaboration between the AGCO, licensed sportsbooks, law enforcement agencies and other stakeholders means “the regime is working”. We also asked Burns for some thoughts and layers on three years of open, regulated sports wagering and igaming in Ontario and what's to come in Year 4, and the introduction of the iGaming Alberta Act by the ruling UCP party into the provincial legislature in the land of oil, gas and Connor McDavid. He also delivered an early look at what will take place during the June 17-19 Canadian Gaming Summit in the city below Caledon. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• The Parleh’s Kevin Kennedy on the Rise of iGaming Content in Ontario

  From the Department of Learning Something New Every Day (or something went MIA from our aging brain): Bill Gates was the brain behind the “content is king” phrase.Alas, we digress.On the latest Gaming News Canada Show, The Parleh’s director of creative strategy and partnerships, Kevin Kennedy returned to the podcast for a chin wag about the evolution of content and storytelling in the legal business of online sports betting and igaming. Kennedy, one of the six partners in the creation of The Parleh (and, in the name of transparency, Gaming News Canada is Parleh Media Group owned) almost four years ago, has led the company’s work on behalf of OLG, ProLine, Sports Interaction (Entain), Party Casino (Entain), BetMGM, BET99, FanDuel, Betano, NEO.bet, Wildz (Rootz), 888 (Evoke), BetVictor and NorthStar Gaming, since Ontario’s open marketplace launched in April 2022. The Parleh has also collaborated with sports organizations such as the Canadian Elite Basketball League and, more recently, The Curling Group, and produces Sports Interaction segments featuring David Bastl on Amazon Prime Video’s NHL Coast to Coast broadcasts during the regular season.https://www.instagram.com/reel/DIrbtydPifz/?igsh=aGhhaG96bWV5MXBhWe took Kennedy on a trip down memory lane to the spring/summer of 2021 when he oversaw a deep roster of content creators producing a plethora of video clips from their residences during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Fast forward to today, where we discussed the lessons learned along the way, the strategy for managing multiple operators in Ontario, the balance of sports betting and igaming storytelling – including the creation of “streeters” content that is now commonly used in the market – and the growth in online casino content. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• The Fourth Estate of Canadian Gaming

  The latest episode of the Gaming News Canada is a gathering of members of the fourth estate to discuss and debate the latest storylines in the business of sports wagering and gaming. Dave Briggs, who mans the keyboard these days on the GNC newsletter. Robyn McNeil of Catena Media’s Bonus outlet and Covers senior news analyst Geoff Zochodne join the media roundtable. The three-year anniversary of Ontario’s open market sparked a good/bad/somewhat ugly-type of conversation, including the continued presence of 49 operators (and OLG), the (still) waiting for a centralized self-exclusion program to be delivered by iGaming Ontario through its partnership with IC360 and IXUp, the (still) waiting for Martha Otton’s replacement to lead iGO, and the ongoing cone of silence - most notably by the provincial government and the AGCO - around legal gambling in the province (McAllister also brought up the curious decision by the American Gaming Association to turn down an interview request for a CBS Sunday Morning feature into the explosion of online sports wagering in the U.S. of A. and gambling addiction). The panel also weighed in on the horse racing industry’s attempts to expand wagering through the Ontario open market, whither consolidation and the financial results delivered by the legal industry. McNeil, Zochodne and Briggs also got into the efforts by the Danielle Smith government in Alberta to get approval on Bill 48 to establish its own open sports betting and igaming marketplace. And the all-journo podcast included a segment on the stories du jour, including the Massachusetts Gaming Commission’s look into limiting, and the ongoing legal wrangling involving Kalshi, Robinhood and Crypto.com around “sports event trading”. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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