GGPoker Owner Sees “No Future” for Poker in a Ring-Fenced Canada, Dismisses an Ontario-Alberta Pool as Too Small

The company behind Ontario’s largest online poker room has offered its bleakest assessment yet of the province’s closed player pool. “We see no future for poker in a provincially ring-fenced Canada,” Sarne Lightman, managing director of GGPoker owner NSUS Group, told Casino.org in an interview published on Wednesday, October 14.

Mr. Lightman also rejected the idea, which Alberta’s iGaming corporation has been discussing with Ontario and which rival 888 supports, that pooling Ontario’s poker players with Alberta’s would fix the problem. His comments come a week after the Supreme Court of Canada heard Ontario’s case for letting its players share tables with players abroad, and a day after Alberta closed its door to unlicensed sites.

“Poker Is the Exception”

NSUS, which is headquartered in Toronto, operates GGPoker Ontario and acquired the World Series of Poker brand from Caesars Entertainment in 2024. Mr. Lightman argued that Ontario’s regulated market has succeeded overall but failed for poker in particular.

“Ontario has built one of the most successful regulated iGaming markets in North America, but poker is the exception,” he said. “Unlike slots or sports betting, poker is a peer-to-peer game that needs a critical mass of players at the same time. The small liquidity has dramatically reduced tournament prize pools, and many game types and blind levels are no longer offered.”

“Outside peak hours, the tables are thin, and that hits recreational players hardest,” he continued. “As the rest of the gambling market grows, poker has stagnated, with players slowly bleeding off to unregulated black-market poker companies. Ontarians are still freely signing up to these sites today.”

What the Numbers Show

The official data broadly supports the first half of that argument. In August, peer-to-peer poker took CA$122 million in cash wagers, about 1.3 per cent of the CA$9.74 billion wagered across Ontario’s regulated market. Poker wagering was down 19 per cent from a year earlier, the first year-over-year August decline since the market opened, as our analysis of iGaming Ontario data showed.

The claim about offshore sites is harder to measure. iGaming Ontario does not publish estimates of unregulated poker play, and Mr. Lightman did not cite figures for it in the interview. It is, however, a familiar argument from operators that want access to larger pools.

A Two-Province Pool, Dismissed

The most pointed comments concerned Alberta. The province opened its regulated market on July 13, and the grace period for offshore operators ended on Tuesday, October 13. GGPoker received registration from Alberta’s regulator in August but has not launched there. Mr. Lightman said the Alberta player pool does not justify operating, Casino.org reported.

Asked whether NSUS would join a pooling agreement between Ontario and Alberta, he was dismissive. “Liquidity sharing between Ontario and Alberta would not meaningfully change the current situation,” he said. “As Alberta forced all unlicensed operators to cease operations on Tuesday, poker players have already migrated to unregulated offshore sites and will have little incentive to return.”

“Even if an agreement could be reached between Alberta and Ontario, a two-province pool would be the U.S. compact model in miniature: too small to compete with the global black market,” he added. In the United States, states must sign formal multi-state compacts before operators can share players.

That puts NSUS at odds with 888. On Tuesday, 888 became the first operator to launch regulated online poker in Alberta, with an Alberta-only pool kept separate from its Ontario tables, Poker Industry PRO reported. 888 has said that shared liquidity between its Ontario and Alberta players would meaningfully improve the experience in both provinces, according to Pokerfuse. Our report on the Alberta launch has the details, and the Ontario-Alberta memorandum talks remain unresolved.

Waiting on the Supreme Court

NSUS was one of the interveners at the Supreme Court hearing on Wednesday, October 7, alongside Flutter Entertainment, the Canadian Gaming Association and the Attorney General of Alberta. Four provincial lottery corporations are asking the court to overturn the Court of Appeal for Ontario’s 4-1 ruling of November 2025, which found the international model lawful.

Mr. Lightman described a European-style model in which each regulator remains responsible for its own operators and players, without government-to-government treaties. “Having several regulators oversee the same network makes it safer, not riskier,” he said. He told Casino.org that the justices’ questions do not necessarily show where the court is leaning, and that he remains confident it will uphold last year’s decision.

Not every observer read the hearing that way. Several justices pressed Ontario hard on whether it could “conduct and manage” games shared with players abroad, as we reported last week. The court reserved its decision and has not said when it will rule. The shared liquidity timeline sets out the case history.

What It Means for Ontario Players

Nothing changes for now. GGPoker Ontario and every other AGCO-registered room remain open only to players aged 19 or over who are physically located in the province, and all tables are Ontario-only. What the interview makes clear is that Ontario’s largest poker operator is staking its plans on the Supreme Court rather than on a deal with Alberta. If the court rules against Ontario, the choice may come down to a small interprovincial pool that NSUS says it does not want, or the closed market it says has no future.

Reporting draws on an interview with Sarne Lightman published by Casino.org (Mark Keast, October 14, 2026), Poker Industry PRO, Pokerfuse, iGaming Ontario monthly data and prior OntarioPoker.com coverage. Quotations are as reported by Casino.org. The illustration is AI-generated for editorial purposes. Online poker in Ontario is limited to players aged 19 or over who are physically located in the province. Free, confidential help is available 24 hours a day from ConnexOntario at 1-866-531-2600.