Loto-Québec Results Increase in the First Quarter of Fiscal Year, Offshore Remains a Threat
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Loto-Québec has published a report in which the operator of regulated gambling products in Québec urged the government to do more in order to restrict the access of unregulated gambling companies that still continue to target locals. Despite this, online sales during the first fiscal quarter shot up, with the company reporting recovering demand. However, the operator insists that more must be done to help guide consumers away from offshore gambling operators.
Loto-Québec Is Successfully Taking Off
Online sports betting sales went up 33.3% year-over-year, meaning that the regulated gambling market has helped contribute to overall growth in gambling revenue. Loto-Québec confirmed that sports betting remains one of the mainstays of the operator:
Single-event betting, which was added to the gaming options in August 2021, is very popular with players and strongly encourages live betting.
Loto-Québec report.
Total revenue reached $744.3m and net profit stood at $446.5m for Loto-Québec at the end of the surveyed period. Net revenue and income went up by 85.5% and 128.1% respectively year-over-year. These results focused exclusively on the legal sports betting options and the Mise-o-jeu+ online sportsbook. But the operator is also keen to make sure that offshore sports betting operators are uprooted from the market.
Many have lingered even after the legalization of sports gambling in most parts of Canada. Presently, Loto-Québec is working with several other gaming operators across the country, including British Columbia Lottery Corp., Atlantic Lottery Corp., Alberta Gaming, Liquor & Cannabis, and Manitoba Liquor and Lotteries Corp. in order to ensure that consumers are protected from the reach of offshore and illegal gambling operators.
The main issue remains that offshore operators are not really respecting regulated markets and they seek to aggressively target the market. Atlantic Lottery president and CEO Patrick Daigle previously stated in an August release that the issue was not just that there was a proliferation of offshore gambling brands. Another issue remained the fact that consumers themselves weren’t always sure when they were playing at regulated gambling websites.
However, Loto-Québec is not working with Ontario at least as part of the coalition to limit offshore gambling. Part of this is because Ontario is already a fully-regulated market where iGaming and online sports gambling are allowed and welcome. This means that Ontario has a much tighter grasp on its own backyard than some of the other provinces in Canada, albeit Ontario has also admitted that offshore operators remain a nuisance.
The good news is that many of those offshore operators were actually popular brands that chose to go legal on April 1, 2022. They also brought with them the hundreds of thousands of customers they had databases on over the past years, making the transition to the regulated market an easy one. However, Loto-Québec has been raising awareness for its products.
An increase of 71% of the respondents of a recent survey agreed with the statement that Loto-Québec was the only regulated gambling entity in the province, an increase from 64%. This means that the lottery operator is succeeding in making sure that local consumers are aware of the fact that the company remains the sole regulated entity in the province for the time being.
