Bill C-218 has been sold by all who wanted to see it pass as a new breadwinner for the Canadian Football League.
The bill allows single-game betting and it is former sportscaster and now Saskatoon MP Kevin Waugh who was able to finally get the bill passed on its third attempt in the last decade.
For the non-gambler, this allows provincial jurisdictions to start getting into the game of proposition bets and allowing people to bet on one game at a time. Right now, before the law passed, to legally bet in Canada on sports you had to bet on multiple games at a time.
Waugh believes this could put $2 million in the pockets of every CFL team in new revenue. That would be huge.
But it’s not going to just happen. In jurisdictions down south that have gone this same route, they’ve had a struggle to match the gambling experience that the current “illegal” sites offer.
So SIGA or the Western Lottery Corporation better put a great product together or Bill C-218 will be a flop for new revenue sources because established bettors aren’t going to change to an inferior product.