Saskatchewan Gambling Laws

Saskatchewan online gambling is just the icing for the land-blocked Canadian province. Punters living there have had the opportunity to play at First Nation casinos for quite some time. There’s also a fully operational Saskatchewan lottery you might want to learn more about. Things are panning out for real money players in the province, giving a lot of topics to discuss. Pick one from the element above if you have something particular in mind.

Saskatchewan Gambling Regulators

There are two main institutions that dictate pace and direction regarding Saskatchewan online gambling laws. Those are the Indian Gaming Authority and the Liquor and Gaming Authority. Learning from the past, legislators have come up with a robust regulatory structure which strikes a balancing act between user safety and better employment rates in the First Nation community. Here’s more information on the two authorities we mentioned.

Saskatchewan Indian Gaming Authority

One of the gaming regulators in charge is the Saskatchewan Indian Gaming Authority (SIGA). SIGA was instituted with the idea of creating employment for First Nation residents in the province, and it was a complete success. It’s worth emphasising that the mission of SIGA extends far beyond the creation of jobs.

The authority has a social responsibility function, releases annual reports, and regulates all First Nation casinos in Saskatchewan. As it is, SIGA became the operator of the only locally regulated online gaming site, though other Saskatchewan casino sites, regulated abroad, are also available.

Saskatchewan Liquor and Gaming Authority

The Saskatchewan Liquor and Gaming Authority (SLGA) is a state-owned enterprise established to keep gaming operators and liquor vendors in check. SLGA enforces the law in line with the legal gambling in Saskatchewan, which also is the legal drinking age in the province. The regulator is the sole owner of all video lottery terminals in the province and licenses all other forms of real-money betting. These are the main obligations of the SLGA in a nutshell:

All that said, the Saskatchewan Liquor and Gaming Authority will be reinstituted in April of 2023 under a new name – Lotteries and Gaming Saskatchewan. The new legal entity will take the reins on the same areas of expertise the SLGA is controlling now, while the SLGA will take a back seat and continue to have a say only on charitable gambling.

British Columbia Lottery Corporation

SIGA – operator of PlayNow.com, chose to lean on the expertise of the British Columbia Lottery Corporation (BCLC) by selecting it as its official vendor. As the name suggests, BCLC is a British Columbia organisation feeding profit back to the province to help communities and improve healthcare, education, etc. It’s also the operator who runs PlayNow.com in British Columbia. After a three-way agreement between the BCLS, the SIGA, and SaskGaming, the former was officialised as the operator of PlayNow.com

Anti-money laundering, security, and compliance are at the core of the value system of BCLS. The corporation was established on the foundation of fairness and caring for players. How much the organisation cares about the impact of what it does is materialised in the form of GameSense – a dedicated player health service. GameSense educates players betting real money on sites like the best Canadian online casinos on the risk of problem gambling.

What Can You Bet on?

The big question everyone is asking themselves is what you are signing up for as a legal user of the gambling sites in Saskatchewan. If we look at the big picture, we see a well-functioning industry where the last significant update was the addition of legal online gambling in Saskatchewan. Fans of lottery games, sports betting, and casino games are all attended to. All persons 19 and above are eligible to:

Legal Land-Based Casinos

Physical casinos are in the scope of legal establishments as per the Saskatchewan gambling laws. The advantage is given to native Canadian tribes who are in charge of six of the active land-based casinos in Saskatchewan. Only two are not under the control of First Nation people. Below we listed the legal casino facilities to visit in Saskatchewan:

Casino Regina comes across as being the classiest of all six facilities cited above. It was built in 1912, and despite not working around the clock (it’s closed between 2 am and 9 am), the casino packs an impressive 1000 slot machines. This is also one of the few places where poker tournaments are organised.

Casino and Sportsbook Sites

The federal government approved single-game sports betting in August 2021. Sports gamblers, however, had to wait up until November 2022 for legal online betting to go live. PlayNow – the managed by SaskGaming site – is now the only online option for SK punters. It has a full package of betting features alongside casino games and responsible gambling functions. Online poker is out of reach at the moment, but you can find cash games and tournaments at some of the legal casinos in Saskatchewan.

Lottery

Despite the gambling age in Saskatchewan being 19 years, buying lottery tickets requires only 18 years of age. Sask Lotteries runs the lottery in Saskatchewan and is a very basic-looking form of sports betting. Young-looking visitors are asked for a picture ID per the “ID under 25” policy the operator places on record. The games you can play include Daily Grand, Lotto 649, Western 649, MAX, Western MAX, Poker Lotto, and Pick.

Legal Gambling Age

The legal gambling age in Saskatchewan is 19, as in most Canadian provinces where games of chance are not outlawed. The age requirement is an important deterrent for the prevention of gambling addiction in Saskatchewan. This is why for milder forms of gaming, such as the lottery, the age requirement is lowered to 18.

All operators, be it the lottery or casino ones, are very local about the dangers of problem gambling and use every opportunity to advise players to seek help if they sense they need such. We want to take the occasion to do the same. Visit the site of Saskatchewan’s problem gambling help service or call 1-800-306-6789.

FAQ

We keep hearing certain questions get asked more often than others like is online gambling legal in Saskatchewan? So, after doing our research, we were able to put together an informer response to the five most frequently asked questions concerning SK gambling laws.