Super Group is taking the slow road into Alberta’s new regulated market. Betway, Spin Casino, and the operator’s other brands won’t go live under Alberta licenses until October, even though the province’s regulated iGaming system has been open since July.
That’s a deliberate choice, not a paperwork delay, and it puts Super Group on a very different timeline than most operators already competing for Alberta players.
Why Super Group Is Waiting
Super Group’s own leadership has been direct about the reasoning. CEO Neal Menashe said the company is “approaching the rollout in a disciplined and phased manner to support sustainable long-term growth, unlike Ontario, which was a ‘big bang.'”
Betway already has an established Alberta user base built up through its offshore license, and Super Group wants to move those existing customers into the regulated product without disrupting the experience that’s kept them playing. Speed matters less to the company than getting that migration right the first time.
The AGLC’s Three-Month Extension
Alberta’s regulator built room for exactly this kind of phased approach. The Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis Commission originally required grey-market operators to stop all unregulated activity by July 13, 2026, the same day the regulated market launched.
But the AGLC also allows a case-by-case extension of up to three months for operators that can show a credible compliance path, pushing the real deadline for those companies to October 13.
Super Group qualified for that extension, and it now operates five licensed brands under the arrangement: Betway, Spin Casino, Jackpot City, Royal Vegas, and Ruby Fortune, adding to an already crowded field of online casinos in Canada going through the same provincial licensing process.
Alberta’s Grey Market Migration Problem
The extension exists because Alberta’s gambling landscape didn’t start clean. Before July, Albertans placing online casino bets had two real options: the government-run PlayAlberta site or an offshore sportsbook and casino operating with no local oversight.
The regulated launch was designed to pull that offshore activity into a licensed, taxed, monitored system rather than let it run in parallel to a single state-run casino.
Not every grey-market operator chose to make that jump. Estonia-based Coolbet withdrew from Alberta entirely rather than meet the new requirements, opting to exit the province instead of transitioning its existing users into a regulated license.
Not Every Operator Is Waiting
Super Group’s patience stands out because plenty of competitors didn’t wait around. Roughly 26 operators were already live in Alberta by early August, including Bally Bet and its Monopoly Casino brand, with another 17 registered but not yet operational.
Nearly 50 companies paid the registration fee ahead of the July 13 launch, though provincial officials estimated only about 20 were actually ready to accept customers on day one. Most of that first wave is already tracked in our running list of the best online casinos in Alberta.
Against that backdrop, Super Group’s October target puts it firmly in the second wave rather than the group racing to be first.
What This Means for Alberta Players
Betway and Spin Casino customers in Alberta can keep playing on the existing offshore-licensed product right up until the October 13 cutoff. After that, both brands must be live under their new AGLC licenses, or they’ll fall out of step with the rest of the regulated market.
For the province, the stakes go beyond any single operator’s rollout plan. Alberta collects 20% of licensed operators’ revenue and has forecast $76 million in provincial revenue during the market’s first year, numbers that only grow as more brands like Betway and Spin Casino fully convert their grey-market player bases into taxed, regulated activity.
Ontario Shows Where This Could Go
Ontario is the reference point Menashe was making when he called the province’s 2022 market launch a “big bang,” and the comparison holds up. Ontario opened its regulated market on April 4, 2022, with just 12 operators live on day one, a fraction of the roughly 50 competing in the province today – a lineup our page on Ontario casinos online tracks in full.
That single-day launch meant every operator, regardless of size or existing customer base, went live under the same regulated framework at once. It worked out for Ontario in the long run. The market now supports more than 2.6 million active player accounts and generated $2.9 billion in gaming revenue during the 2024-25 fiscal year.
Getting there meant every operator absorbed the same disruption at once, which is precisely the scenario Super Group is trying to avoid by spreading its own transition over several extra months.
Whether that patience pays off the way Menashe expects won’t be clear until October has come and gone. Either way, Betway and Spin will soon be operating under the same rules as everyone else in the province, just on their own schedule.
