PowerPlay Launches in Alberta on GiG's Platform, 11 Weeks After the Date It Called Locked

GiG Software says PowerPlay is its fourth brand live in Alberta and the first to run its SportX sportsbook in the province. In May, PowerPlay said its 13 July launch date was "locked"; its arrival was reported on 1 October, and neither company has said what held it up.

• GiG Software plc said on 8 October that it has powered PowerPlay Online Casino & Sportsbook's expansion into Alberta, its fourth active brand in the province and the first Alberta deployment of its SportX sportsbook
• PowerPlay said it had entered Alberta's regulated market after securing all provincial approvals and completing its commercial onboarding, in a statement reported on 1 October, 11 weeks after the market opened on 13 July
• In May, PowerPlay's head of sportsbook said "July 13's go-live date is locked"; the regulator's register lists its operating company, Trillium Ventures Limited, with a registration expiring on 13 July 2027
• Neither company has disclosed commercial terms, PowerPlay's Alberta volumes or why the launch came later than planned
• The launch lands days before 13 October, the outer limit of Alberta's grey-market transition, when Stake expects to go live

PowerPlay Moves Its Ontario Set-Up to Alberta, Later Than Promised

GiG Software plc, the Malta-based platform supplier listed on Nasdaq First North in Stockholm, announced on Thursday 8 October that it has "powered the expansion of long-term partner PowerPlay Online Casino & Sportsbook into Alberta's newly regulated iGaming market". GiG Software is the B2B business that was separated from Gaming Innovation Group in September 2024, when the parent kept the affiliate arm and renamed itself Gentoo Media. It is GiG Software, not Gentoo, that supplies PowerPlay.

According to the release, PowerPlay runs on GiG's player account management system, its SportX sportsbook, its LogicX rules engine and its DataX data engine, the same stack it has used in Ontario since migrating to GiG in March 2025. GiG describes PowerPlay as its "fourth active brand" in the province and says the launch is the first time SportX has been deployed in Alberta. GiG has announced two of the earlier three: LuckyDays on the market's opening day and Casino Time in August. It has not named the third in a release on its website.

PowerPlay's own announcement came first. In a statement reported by Yogonet on 1 October, it said it had entered Alberta's regulated market after it "secured all approvals from provincial authorities and completed its commercial onboarding requirements", and that its online sportsbook was available to players in the province. We could not find the original release on PowerPlay's own channels. That announcement mentions only the sportsbook; GiG's release and PowerPlay chief executive Dean Serrao's quote in it describe SportX launching "alongside our full casino". We could not load PowerPlay's Alberta site to check the casino independently.

The date matters because PowerPlay had promised an earlier one. In May, Bill O'Brien, its head of sportsbook, said "July 13's go-live date is locked, and so are we" and promised "a fully live, full-loaded platform from day one", according to Yogonet. The Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis Commission (AGLC) register lists Trillium Ventures Limited, the company named as PowerPlay's seller on its Ontario app, as an iGaming operator with a registration expiring on 13 July 2027, the expiry shared by the registrations in place at the market's opening. That suggests the regulatory step was complete in July. Neither company has explained the gap.

Alberta's Two Gates and the 13 October Line

Alberta's model separates regulation from commerce. The AGLC registers and supervises operators; the Alberta iGaming Corporation (AiGC), a Crown corporation, signs the commercial agreements. "As of July 13, all operators must be registered with AGLC and have signed a commercial agreement" with the AiGC, the regulator says. Operators that had served Alberta without a licence had to stop by 13 July, with case-by-case extensions to 13 October at the latest. The register now holds 42 entries in the iGaming operator class, including the province's own Play Alberta.

GiG cites an estimate from H2 Gambling Capital that Alberta could generate €440 million to €625 million of annual gross gaming revenue as it matures. That is a forecast, not a measured figure. The financial terms of the GiG and PowerPlay deal were not disclosed.

The Missing Explanation Is the Second Gate

PowerPlay's own wording points to where the time went. A registration dated from the opening, followed by an announcement that leans on "commercial onboarding", is consistent with a hold-up at the AiGC stage or in certifying a sportsbook GiG had never run in the province, though neither company says so. It is the same second gate on which Stake's 12 October date depends. The cost of missing the opening is real for a brand whose pitch is that it is Canadian, not imported: the 11 weeks it lost were the market's opening weeks, when players moving from offshore sites were most likely to be choosing their first licensed account. PowerPlay now competes in a market whose register already lists 42 operator entries.

For GiG, Alberta Is Ontario Again, One Brand at a Time

PowerPlay was GiG's fourth partner launch in Ontario in March 2025 and is now its fourth in Alberta. Casino Time also came across from Ontario. GiG's growth in Canada is a matter of following clients it already serves into the next province, which is cheaper than winning new ones and is what its "replicate" language in the release describes. GiG needs it to work. Its second-quarter revenue fell 5% to €8.8 million, it reported an operating loss of €6.9 million including €3 million of bad-debt provisions, it held €3.5 million of cash at 30 June, and it is exiting the US and the Philippines while it buys 80% of 888AFRICA. No single brand launch will transform those numbers, and GiG does not disclose what each partner pays.

PowerPlay is live in Alberta on a platform it already runs in Ontario, later than it said it would be. The date it missed matters less now than whether a Canadian brand arriving in October can take share from the operators that opened in July.