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Making in-Rhodes

Now helping with legalized sports betting in Alberta, it’s a whole new game for former EE Football Club CEO

TERRY JONES tjones@postmedia.com @byterryjones

Len Rhodes, when he resigned as CEO of the EE Football Club, never expected to end up heading the new legalized sports betting business for the Province of Alberta.

Rhodes has become Chair of the Alberta Gaming & Liquor Control Board and, along with acting President & CEO Kandice Machado and her team, is in charge of legalized sports betting in Alberta.

Up and running for the past three weeks, it is expected to begin to boom as the NFL is underway and NHL teams head to training camp.

“It is inspiring to oversee an organization that delivers approximately $2 billion annually to Alberta’s general revenue fund. And I also get to be involved in things I can relate to from my days with the football club, including AGLC’s introduction of online 50-50 which has taken jackpots to a whole new level in Alberta,” Rhodes said.

“It’s so exciting to now have legalized sports betting in Canada. Fans can now place wagers on the Oilers, Elks, Flames and Stampeders along with several other teams on PlayAlberta.ca, the province’s only regulated gaming site where money played in Alberta stays in Alberta,” Rhodes said.

It is no small operation testified Mochado.

“The Canadian Gaming Association estimates that more than $4 billion is gambled through sports books every year. The AGLC expects sports betting wagers on the provinces regulated gambling platform to total $3.3 billion in the first five years after the legalization of single event wagering,” she said.

“We have options such as money line, point spread, over/under and props for NHL, CFL, NFL, MLB, NBA, European soccer, college football and much more.

“As of the launch on August 30, we offer approximately 550 leagues and tournaments. We look forward to adding more leagues and betting offers as we continue to build out the site.

“As expected, the most volume is coming through the NFL. But MLB is also quite popular right now with the run the Toronto Blue Jays have been on.

“The NFL will always be a volume driver for online sports betting but we are very excited to shine a light on our local teams through our CFL offerings. We currently offer 17 different types of bets on CFL games.

“We expect Albertans will be enthusiastic to place bets on the NHL now that the NHL season is about to begin. It’ll be interesting to see which NHL market, that of the Edmonton Oilers or if the Calgary Flames outperforms the other in terms of bets and winnings,” she said.

This is just the beginning Machado insists.

“The AGLC is in the planning process for retail sports betting and possible mobile extension that we anticipate will open in 2022. We will be working with our stakeholders to establish a retail sports betting market through existing land-based casinos and racing entertainment centres throughout the province.”

She believes the legalized sports single event betting will be good for everybody in the sports business.

“It should result in significantly higher fan engagement from beginning to end of every game. People who wager keep their eyeballs and attention on the game.

“It should be better value for broadcast partners as fans stay glued to their TV sets, resulting in greater viewership numbers and more potential for advertising revenue.

“And I believe it will result in new sponsorship opportunities for the teams and leagues.”

Meanwhile, Rhodes has had a happy landing.

“My 50-50 experience from football certainly came in handy when AGLC made the decision to authorize the transformation to legalizing the online version,” he said.

“COVID-19 threw a curve at many charities and sports teams that rely on 50-50 for their foundations. AGLS’s management team executed the changes in record time, allowing many charities to literally survive the

pandemic,” added the former CEO of the team that developed the 50-50 into a phenomenon that paid winners six figure prize money and raised close to a million dollars a season for Golden Bears, Wildcats, Huskies and minor football.

With Molson Coors from 1988-99, Rhodes was based in Montreal and Toronto as marketing brand director before joining Reebok-CCM from 1999-2011 as VP & GM for their worldwide hockey operations.

“November 30th will mark my 10th anniversary of moving from Montreal to Edmonton,” Rhodes said.

“I am very proud that I left the football club with record revenues and a very strong financial position at the time,” he said of his Feb. 2019 decision to resign.

“Departing after hosting one of the best and most successful Grey Cup Festivals in history and one that had an $80 million economic impact for the city is what I call the right time to move on to something else.” Timing is everything.

If he’d stayed with the team, he’d have had to go through losing an entire season due to COVID-19, go through the name change to Elks, witness the outbreak with 13 players testing positive and being forced to quarantine for 10 days and postpone a game in Toronto, lose the first four games of the season and draw the fewest fans to a game in likely half a century.

It is inspiring to oversee an organization that delivers approximately $2 billion annually to Alberta’s general revenue fund. Len Rhodes

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2021-09-22T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-09-22T07:00:00.0000000Z

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