As of Friday morning, Loto Quebec’s online gambling site went live. By the first of December, registered players will be limited to wagering $9,999 per week. Why they just didn’t make it an even $10K is another story.
If there’s one thing Quebecers love to do it’s gamble. Quebecers love them some gambling, that’s for sure. Up to about 20,000 Quebecers are expected to register on the Espacejeux.com site by Christmas. With British Columbia already having its own online gambling site, Playnow.com, Loto Quebec and the British Columbia Lottery Corp are expected to partner creating a joint platform for the poker offerings that will be hosted in Montreal as a cross country poker platform.
The reasons for Loto-Quebec launching their own online gambling site are obvious, it’s a cash cow. So Loto-Québec CEO Alain Cousineau isn’t fooling anyone when he says that the main reason they’re moving online is to cannibalize players from 2,000 so-called ‘illegal’ sites now available to Quebecers. That’s a hot load of horseshit. When you’re running an operation that is expected to generate around $50 million in new revenue for for the province in 2012, your in it for the dough, and you’re not trying to protect anyone, you’re trying to weed out the competition. On the transparency front, that’s strike one.
