A top executive at GGPoker's parent company says Ontario's regulated poker market is running out of road. Sarne Lightman, managing director of NSUS Group, argues that unless the Supreme Court of Canada permits Ontario players to compete in international liquidity pools, the province's legal poker industry will keep losing ground to unregulated offshore operators.
The warning comes as Canada's top court weighs a case with consequences well beyond poker. At stake is whether provincially licensed operators can pool players across borders for peer-to-peer games such as poker and daily fantasy sports, or whether each province must keep its player base walled off within its own jurisdiction.
Why Liquidity Matters for Poker Specifically
Poker differs fundamentally from slots or sports betting. It is not a game played against the house; it is played against other people. That means its quality depends entirely on how many players are sitting at the virtual tables at any given moment. Thin player pools mean fewer tournaments, smaller prize pools, and fewer game variants and stake levels on offer. Outside peak hours, tables can sit nearly empty - a problem that falls hardest on casual, recreational players rather than professionals, who have more tolerance for seeking out action.
According to iGaming Ontario's own reporting, peer-to-peer poker made up roughly 1% of the province's total regulated wagering volume in the period covered - a modest slice of a market otherwise dominated by slots and sports betting. Lightman's argument is that this imbalance isn't a sign poker is inherently unpopular in Ontario, but rather that the ring-fenced structure has starved it of the scale it needs to function well.
The Legal Question Before the Supreme Court
The case stems from a 4-1 Ontario Court of Appeal ruling in November 2025 that favored allowing international liquidity sharing. Ontario, backed by Alberta, the Canadian Gaming Association and several operators, contends that pooling players internationally is lawful under the Criminal Code provided Ontario continues to conduct and manage the activity within its own regulatory framework. Under this model, each regulator remains accountable for its own licensees and players, without requiring formal treaties between governments - an approach similar to how the UK and EU oversee shared liquidity networks.
Opposing that view, provincial lottery corporations from British Columbia, Quebec, Manitoba and the Atlantic provinces argue that cross-border pooling stretches provincial authority beyond its constitutional limits. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Oct. 7 and has reserved judgment, with no indication yet of when a ruling will come.
Lightman cautioned against reading too much into the justices' questioning during the hearing, saying it offers no reliable signal of the eventual outcome, though he said he remains confident the earlier Court of Appeal decision will be upheld.
The Black-Market Pressure Point
For NSUS, which operates GGPoker.ca in Ontario and acquired the World Series of Poker brand in 2024, the core concern is consumer migration. Lightman described unregulated offshore platforms as a direct "liquidity competitor" to licensed operators - sites that offer deeper player pools and bigger tournaments but without the anti-money laundering checks or safer-gambling protections required of regulated operators. Players chasing better games and larger prize pools, he said, are already drifting toward these platforms despite Ontario's otherwise robust regulatory framework.
This dynamic illustrates a recurring tension in regulated gambling markets: tight jurisdictional controls can improve oversight but, if too restrictive, risk pushing consumers toward operators with no oversight at all. Alberta's newly launched regulated market faces a similar structural challenge. Lightman noted that NSUS does not operate there because the player pool is too small to justify entry, and he was skeptical that an Ontario-Alberta liquidity-sharing arrangement would meaningfully change the picture, likening it to the fragmented, compact-based model used across US states - workable in theory, but often too limited in scale to compete with global unregulated platforms.