Manitoba to Enter Online Gambling Market

As many Canadians know, online casinos in Canada are becoming quite popular. However, due to lack of legislation, many of the players visit offshore gambling sites.

The fact is that Canadian gambling laws don’t allow for issuing licenses to Internet casinos, thus most players visit the ones registered in places like Malta or Gibraltar. However, this is changing as some provincial governments, knowing their residents still will gamble online, are seeking to get a chunk of the revenues.

The government of Manitoba is seeking to provide opportunities to play online poker in Canada with its own website. This is quite interesting as now we got one year anniversary since poker sites in America were shot down.

The provincial website will also offer other games. In fact, Manitoba will work in partnership with another Canadian province, British Columbia, which has been running its own online casino operations for two years.

This move comes in response to studies which estimate that Manitobans spent nearly $40 million a year at offshore gambling sites. If the government offers its own online gambling options, some of the gambling revenues will fill province’s coffers.

Canada seems to be legalizing online wagering at a provincial level, one by one. This is similar to what is presently happening south of the border where individual American states are taking steps to legalize more forms of Internet betting. Better to have controlled online gaming for money than have the citizens go elsewhere anyway.