How does the US Gambling market compare to the Canadian Gambling market?
While the American gambling industry has its fair share of complications, such as certain types of gambling only being legal in certain states, however, Canada differs considerably.
Perhaps the biggest difference between the US gambling industry and Canadian gambling industry is that in Canada the laws are generally much more relaxed, however, it is crucial that every operator has a license from its specific state; a power that was handed to each state by the government so that they could regulate gambling activity in their own territory.
How does online gambling compare?
While this increasingly popular activity is currently only legal in five states across America; Nevda, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana and Delaware, it is far more widespread in Canada, however, this does not come without its complications and own set of nuances.
According to the country’s Criminal Code, hosting a gambling website in Canada is actually considered to be illegal, though the way around it for companies is that every province has the ability to grant permission to those companies that they deem appropriate.
One of the exceptions to this rule however, focuses on the Kahnawake Mohawk Nation, which like similar tribal states in the US (who have their own land based casinos), received permission to provide its own casino website to players. At the time, this was a decision which was fiercely opposed to by the country’s Attorney General, who subsequently described this as being illegal under Canadian gambling laws, though to this date, no action has been taken against the Kahnawake Mohawk Nation regarding any of their gambing operations.
Payment methods
A considerable amount of Canada’s online casinos are actually based outside of the country, which has had a number of effects on the processing of payments, though this is also something that is common in the United States. Some US casinos, for example, are based in countries such as the US Virgin Islands, which also contributes to payment issues.
One thing that Canada was able to do in order to help combat this was offer a new payment system called Citadel, which is one of the legally allowed payment methods, particularly for allowing players to make deposits. This internet based payment service has a number of benefits for Canadian players, including the safe and secure processing of funds, either by way of deposit or withdrawal. The main requirement in order to use this though is that all Canadian’s are required to have a valid bank account, so that Citadel can communicate between the gambling website and the relevant account that their funds are going to or/and from. While a lot of payment methods can take up to 10 days for funds to be transferred to their account, Citadel usually takes up to 72 hours, making it a faster and more convenient alternative than doing straight to a bank account from the online casino.
In the US, PayPal is a popular method for online casino players to use in order to deposit and withdraw funds; in fact a great deal of players prefer to use this, with online gambling still a relatively young industry in America.
Overview
What is perhaps interesting is that when it comes to which markets are the most popular in both countries, there isn’t too much of a difference with online slots and table games equally liked by players in each. While in the US though, American football tends to dominate the sports betting landscape, it is perhaps unsurprising that in Canada, it is ice hockey (the country’s national sport nonetheless), which tends to be the most popular.
Undoubtedly the biggest difference between the two countries when it comes to the gambling industry, is that in Canada, the attitude towards gambling is quite a lot more relaxed compared to that of the US and approval as well as regulation falls to individual provinces. It remains to be seen whether laws in the US will become more relaxed in the future, however, Canada’s current model does appear to be working well.