The law
Play Alberta, the province's own site in a market it no longer has alone
For almost six years, the only legal online casino in Alberta belonged to the regulator itself. The private market did not replace it, since Play Alberta still runs beside the fifty-one registered sites, with a monopoly on one product and a future that a bill of 2026 has made uncertain in a way the province has not yet resolved.
A regulator that also runs a casino
Play Alberta was launched by Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis in 2020 as the province's answer to the offshore sites that its residents were already using, and it offers slots, table games and sports betting under the same body that regulates gambling in Alberta. That arrangement looks odd from outside (a "referee" who also fields a team), and yet it was, until recently, the Canadian norm rather than an exception.
Before Ontario opened its market in 2022, every province with legal online gambling ran it through a "public operator" of its own (BCLC's PlayNow, Loto-Québec, Atlantic Lottery). Alberta followed that pattern in 2020 and then, with the iGaming Alberta Act, moved on to the "competitive model" without closing the public site, as our page on the other provinces explains with the two models side by side.
What only Play Alberta may sell
One product stayed with the province, and it is the one most players would least expect: online "lottery tickets". The registered private sites may offer slots, table games, "live dealer" tables, poker between players and sports betting, but a player who wants to buy a lottery ticket online in Alberta still buys it from Play Alberta (and from nobody else).
Bingo played online is not available on the private sites either (bingo halls, of course, continue); the province excluded "iBingo" from the products a registered operator may offer under its registration. For everything else Play Alberta competes with the private sites on the same footing in the eyes of a player, even if not quite in the eyes of the rules!
A conflict the province acknowledged
The same agency writes the standards and runs a site that competes with the operators it regulates. The iGaming Alberta Act moved the commercial side of the private market into a new corporation, AiGC, which is part of the answer, and Bill 31, described below, shows that the province is still deciding where Play Alberta belongs.
The bill that could sell it
In 2026 the province introduced the "Red Tape Reduction Statutes Amendment Act" (Bill 31), which, according to the trade press, could allow Play Alberta to be sold to a private buyer. No decision to sell has been published, and we would not write as if one had been made; a "power to sell" is not a sale, and the province has said nothing we could find about a buyer or a timetable. Nothing has been sold.
What a sale would mean for players is not yet clear either, although some consequences follow from the rules as they stand today, without any change to them. Accounts, balances and limits would have to move somewhere under some agreement with AiGC, and the province's "self-exclusion" would continue to apply to whatever the site became, because it covers every registered site in Alberta (and a sold site would have to be registered like any other).
For a player choosing today
The choice is yours. Play Alberta is a legitimate option with the same core protections as the registered private sites: the province's self-exclusion, "deposit limits", a minimum age of eighteen and play restricted to people inside Alberta (checked by geolocation, as on every registered site in the province). It is also run by a public body, which you may value for its own sake (a public body has no private shareholders waiting for a "dividend"), and which others find less lively than the private sites.
It does not appear among the cards on this site (we have no commercial arrangement with it), and it sits outside the list of private registered sites we describe. We mention it because a fair account of the market has to, and because a player who wants a lottery ticket online has no other legal choice here.
What we will watch
Two developments would change this page, a decision on Bill 31's power of sale and any change in the products reserved to Play Alberta, and both would be announced by the province and reported by the trade press within days (which is where we watch for them, every week).
Until then the facts on this page are as we read them on the dates shown. The wider legal picture is on online gambling law in Alberta, and the division of work between AGLC and AiGC is set out on its own page, with the contacts that you may need if a complaint ever has to be made, by you or by anyone else.
By the Alberta Casinos Online editorial team · Last updated: November 13, 2026 · Online since 2026
