This is a guest contribution by Johnny Jaswal and Brian Thomas Hall, founding Partners of Jaswal Hall. If you would like to submit a contribution please contact Bill Beatty for submission details. Thank you.

“[Rule] Number 2: never let ’em know your next move, don’t you know bad boys move in silence” – Notorious B.I.G.

Our firm, Jaswal Hall, was recently approached by a large private equity firm interested in investing in the online gambling space. There is no doubting the significant financial opportunities in the online gambling space as it has progressed into a multibillion-dollar global industry with significant upside.

As part of its diligence, the private equity firm was interested in better understanding the current Canadian regulatory regime around online gambling and, perhaps more importantly, how that regulatory regime is likely to develop and evolve in the next few years. Given one of our founding Partners, Brian Hall, had recently presented on the topics at the 2015 Canadian Gaming Summit at Caesars Windsor, we had well-formed views on the issues. We summarized the current legal status of online gambling in Canada, focusing on the foreign operator principle (which we have discussed in previous articles), and articulated our analysis with respect to the evolution of online gambling in Canada. Our conclusions for Canada were primarily based on a report by the Working Group on Online Gambling, created by Quebec’s former Minister of Finance Raymond Bachand and chaired by Dr. Louise Nadeau.