- Bet365 is the latest sportsbook to be licensed by the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO).
- Bet365 will offer sports betting, casino games and poker.
- Ontario will launch their regulated and competitive iGaming market on April 4.
If you needed any validation about the dynamism of the Ontario sports betting market we’ve got some. Yesterday, we finished off our three part series about the companies currently licensed by the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO) — the oversight body for gaming and sports betting in the province. I completed that article just before 11:00 AM Pacific and am writing this article approximately 24 hours later. There’s already a new entry in the AGCO licensing database.
The latest company to be licensed is Hillside ENC. That might not ring a bell but unless you’ve been incarcerated for the past decade, the name Bet365 certainly will. From the looks of it, Bet365 will be offering sports betting, casino games and poker in Ontario. Here’s the entry from the iAGCO database:
As you can see, they’ve got a ton of URLs listed but most look like support resources for casino, poker and sports betting. The mobile apps listed for casino, live casino, games and sports. Not sure what the ‘games’ app will be–in New Jersey, slots and table games are in the same app. They could be offering separate apps in Ontario, or it could be an app for something else (eg: social games like backgammon). It might also be a ‘placeholder’ name for a poker app.
Bet365 was founded in Stoke-on-Trent, England which is a city of around 240,000 people located almost equidistant between Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham. The company’s home office remains in Stoke-on-Trent and they have smaller offices in a number of locations worldwide including Australia, Gibraltar and Malta. They launched in 2000 and quickly became a major player in UK betting both online and retail. In 2005, they sold their retail betting shop chain for £40 million to Coral and have since been primarily an online/interactive business.
In 2018, they started to focus on overseas expansion. They were quick to launch in the US following the Supreme Court’s beatdown of PASPA and began offering services to New Jersey in 2018. In 2020, they signed a deal with Century Casinos to launch in Colorado but as of yet they haven’t gone live. They received the necessary licensing to launch at the December 2021 meeting of the Colorado Limited Gaming Control Commission. Since they’ve not opened up shop on the cusp of ‘March Madness’ my guess is that they’ll wait until right before football season.
Stay tuned for more information on the companies preparing to launch in Ontario.
