Gaming News Canada Show Steve McAllister

The Canadian Elite Basketball League opens its sixth season tonight in Calgary with the hometown Surge hosting the Edmonton Stingers in a hoops edition of the Battle of Alberta expected to draw more than 10,000 fans.
 
Mike Morreale, the CEBL’s commissioner, and deputy commissioner John Lashway appeared on the Gaming News Canada Show to set the table for the 10-team loop’s Summer of 2024. Morreale and Lashway walked GNCS host Steve McAllister through the league’s efforts to educate players, coaches, officials and other stakeholders on its sports betting policy and collaborating with league partners Genius Sports, SIS and BetVictor in the fight against match-fixing.
 
The podcast also includes a discussion on the CEBL’s partnership with BetVictor, which this season includes a weekly betting show to be produced by Homestand Sports.
 
And, Morreale and Lashway both weighed in on the league’s growth from six teams in its 2019 inaugural season to 10 teams with plans for expansion in 2025, the development of players, coaches and officials who have graduated to the National Basketball Association, and the CEBL becoming an attractive place for players looking to climb the pro hoops ladder.

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This morning, Sharp Alpha Advisors – the New York-based venture capital firm which specializes in sports, gaming and entertainment – announced the closing of Sharp Alpha Fund II, an oversubscribed $250-million VC fund investing in early-stage businesses. Lloyd Danzig, the managing partner of Sharp Alpha Advisors, joined the Gaming News Canada Show from Dallas to provide more details around the breaking news.
 
He also spoke about the flurry of M&A activity so far in 2024, including the acquisition of Quarter4 by FairPlay Sports Media Group, and what’s motivating those transactions, and what investors are looking for when it comes to providing funding to companies in the sports, gaming and entertainment spaces. And, what excites him about the innovation and products appearing in the world of sports wagering and online gaming these days.
Danzig, who will be speaking at next month’s Canadian Gaming Summit in Toronto, also addressed the opportunities north of the border. 

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Three years since doing the incorporation thing – and less than a year before the opening of Ontario’s regulated sports betting and igaming industry – Parleh Media Group’s journey has been one of twists and turns for its Homestand, Bettor Content and The Parleh/Gaming News Canada brands.
 
Mark Silver, the PMG chief executive officer who brought together the company’s six founding partners in early 2021 and Homestand’s content/brand grand poobah Kevin Kennedy appeared on the Gaming News Canada Show for some reminiscing and a lookahead at the opportunities in the always-changing world of betting, gaming and media. Silver spoke about his latest experience in a startup business, and the need for continuous experimenting and shifting strategies to meet the needs of some 10 clients which Parleh has served in Ontario’s two-year-old regulated marketplace. Kennedy was asked for his thoughts on the merger of sports betting and sports media – including The Locker Room program that’s available on the Sports Interaction app - the continuous search for unique content in a market that remains crowded despite the challenges faced by traditional media, and the content opportunities around Ontario’s robust online gaming business. 
 
Both PMG leaders gave their own taps of the hockey twig, Silver to investors and other supporters of the company, and Kennedy to the group of established and just-starting content creators who are finding a different path these days to telling stories in the world of sports.

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The leadership group at U.S. Integrity and Odds On Compliance took its own version of the Nestea plunge last month when it announced the merger of the two companies under a new brand, IC360.
 
Matthew Holt, the chief executive officer of the new company, and IC360 president Eric Frank appeared on the latest episode of the Gaming News Canada Show. The main drivers of the merger gave us the back story on how U.S. Integrity and Odds On Compliance came together since launching ProhiBet at the beginning of 2023, and the new business’s integration of integrity and compliance products. Holt explained the creation of an education and training team led by former EPIC Global Solutions employees Mark Potter and Dan Trolaro while both Holt and Frank got into the fast-moving evolution of artificial intelligence in supporting its integrity and compliance services. The interview also included a discussion on IC360’s plans for the Canadian market, including the hiring of Sebastian Jedrzejewski from the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario last year and U.S. Integrity’s collaboration with the AGCO in the days leading up to the opening of the province’s regulated gambling marketplace.

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Some 5,000 people working across various sectors of the sports wagering and gaming industry in the U.S., Canada and countries around the planet will gather inside at the Meadowlands Exposition Center in Secaucus, NJ, next week for the annual SBC Summit North America. It’s one of two major conferences organized this spring by SBC, which will co-host with the Canadian Gaming Association the June 18-20 Canadian Gaming Summit at the Metro Toronto Convention Center. 
 
Gambling industry veteran Sue Schneider, the VP of Growth and Strategy for SBC’s North American business, was our guest on this edition of the Gaming News Canada Show. Schneider, who was inducted into the Sports Betting Hall of Fame during the 2022 North America summit, teed up next week’s rendezvous in Secaucus, provided some helpful hints to first-time attendees and gave her perspective on the evolution of the SBC events, and the industry itself over a quarter of a century. We also asked what attendees of the Canadian Gaming Summit can expect next month in SBC’s second year of co-hosting the conference.
 
One of the most-passionate advocates for women working in the industry, Schneider also spoke about the progress that’s been made, including the creation of companies such as Ontario-regulated online gaming business Betty, and Betting Ladies, and the need to continue those efforts. She also weighed in on the current state of the gambling industry in the U.S.

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It was a homecoming of sorts when Will Hill joined the Canadian Lottery Coalition as its executive director. 
 
Hill, who spent 11 years with OLG, these days represents a collaboration of the Alberta Lottery and Gaming Corporation, the Atlantic Lottery Corporation, BCLC, Loto-Québec, the Manitoba Liquor & Lotteries Corporation, and the Saskatchewan Indian Gaming Authority. On the latest episode of the Gaming News Canada Show, he addressed the coalition’s advocacy for legal gambling across Canada and the work that’s been done in trying to limit gambling advertising by regulated operators in Ontario within the province’s borders. And, we asked him about the apparent road to regulation that’s happening in Alberta.
 
The former journalist and Toronto Blue Jays employee also teed up a panel discussion at the Canadian Gaming Summit in June which is scheduled to include crown corporation leaders Kandice Machado (AGLC), Pat Davis (BCLC), Patrick Daigle (ALC) and Jean-Francois Bergeron (Loto-Québec). Hill also provided some thoughts on the current state of the gambling industry in North America, including a decline in casino visitors in some U.S. states.

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