Young Canadian adults prefer technology driven gambling

01.05.2008

A report in the Montreal Gazette, based in the closest Canadian city to the Kahnawake First Nation enclave which licences and hosts many online gambling companies, reports that young adult Canadians under age 35 are probably gambling more on technology driven games, whilst older generations are in general gambling less.

The newspaper was quoting an expert paper by pollster Allan Gregg, who told the 2008 Canadian Gaming Summit that one- third of Canadians say they are gambling less than they did three years ago, while those under 35 years of age are more likely to be gambling more.

"Unfortunately for lottery jurisdictions in Canada, this younger group favours the technology driven gambling options of the future," the chairman of Harris/Decima told about 200 conference participants.

Gregg revealed that in a national poll of 3 047 Canadians, online sports betting and Web-based poker games are considered acceptable forms of gambling by 56 percent of those 18 to 34 years of age. Only 20 percent of those over 55 years of age and only 35 percent of those over 35 favoured online sports betting, Gregg said.

Younger people were also more supportive of interactive online lottery games, buying lottery tickets via a mobile device or playing casino games for money via in-home televisions, according to the 2008 National Gambling Report, which Gregg presented to the conference.

Canadians spend an estimated Cdn$ 300 million to Cdn$ 400 million a year on online gambling by accessing computer servers based in foreign jurisdictions or on the Mohawk reserve of Kahnawake, Paul Burns, vice-president of the Canadian Gaming Association, told the newspaper in a post-conference interview.

The Mohawk council contends that it has a sovereign right to allow and regulate the computer servers on the reserve that play host to an array of gambling sites. The council-run Mohawk Internet Technologies is considered one of the global hubs of Internet gambling, the report adds, opining that neither the provincial nor federal governments have forced the issue, apparently fearing confrontation with the Mohawks.

A recent study by the Canadian Gaming Association (see previous InfoPowa report) pegged total revenue from industry activities - including casinos, lotteries, VLTs and pari-mutual gambling - at just over $15.3 billion in 2006. Governments and charities received almost $8.7 billion of those revenues.