Everywhere you look, governments are getting into the online gambling business. A little more expansively in Europe, a little more tentatively in America, and downright ineptly in British Columbia. As Calvin Ayre tells the National Post’s Diane Francis, before they begin booking the revenue on their balance sheet, governments looking to launch their own online gambling product need to realize that they will be directly competing with private companies who have been doing this for 15 years. There’s no room for error for a new entrant, as the bungled PlayNow launch has so acutely demonstrated.
Think of it this way – the Battle of Britain would never have been considered England’s ‘finest hour’ if they’d tried to tackle the Luftwaffe with clunky World War One biplanes instead of speedy, maneuverable Spitfires. And lest we point out – those Spitfires were made in the same island they were built to defend, unlike BCLC’s PlayNow, which shunned local gaming-related technology companies in favor of foreign firms, who clearly didn’t bring the same sense of homegrown pride to their contract work. Read more.
