Canadian BC Gambling Powerhouse to Enter Online Mobile Casino Market

The Canadian gambling operator, British Columbian Lottery Corporation (BCLC), is searching for new ways to increase its market share and believes that mobile gaming is the way to do it. B.C. was the first government in North America to venture into online gambling and introduce one of the first legal online casinos in Canada.

Back in July 2010, following a change in Canadian gambling laws, the online operation of B.C. Lottery was launched. Rich Coleman, the cabinet minister stated that B.C. residents were spending around $100 million annually on online gaming. Thus he highly encouraged BCLC to offer online gaming and raise their betting limit to $9,999.

Thanks to latest technological developments mobile gaming is growing in astronomical proportions, and BCLC doesn’t want to miss out on a piece of a juicy pie. The company is currently running an online survey among its customer to find out whether they’d like to access lottery, poker, casino and sports betting from their mobile devices.

A BCLC spokesperson told Canada gambling news that no decision has been made yet to proceed with mobile gambling. The online site of BCLC already has over 170K customers and is beating all projections concerning revenues and profits.

However, online gambling sector is still responsible for just one percent of the company’s income. That is expected to increase to four percent by 2014. Most of BCLC’s $1 billion revenue is derived from classic lotteries and land-based casinos, with slot machines replacing bingo games in recent years.