iGaming Ontario Executive Director Martha Otton has pushed back her retirement date to March 2025 to allow iGO more time to identify and appoint her successor as leader.

iGO announced that Otton, who intended to retire at the end of this month, has “graciously agreed” to delay her retirement and remain as chief executive until March 31, 2025. The agency said her continuation in the role will ensure its “steady leadership” of Ontario’s competitive iGaming market.

iGO has engaged a recruitment firm to help identify Otton’s successor but the appointment is taking longer than projected as they seek the right person to step into a newly defined role of CEO and president.

The conduct-and-manage entity for Ontario’s private commercial gaming market first announced Otton’s impending retirement back in August. Her last day was initially set to be Dec. 31, 2024.

Otton has led iGO since early 2021 and oversaw the lead-up to, launch of and early success of Ontario’s regulated commercial online gaming and betting market. iGO said that during her three-and-a-half years in the position, “she has built a value-driven agency guided by the vision to lead the world’s best gaming market.”

Under her oversight, Ontario’s online gambling market has become a multi-billion-dollar industry, with more than 50 operators and roughly 80 different websites contributing to $2.4 billion in revenue from $63 billion in wagers in FY 2023-24, jumps of 71.4% and 78%, respectively, from year one of the market.

Otton and iGO also selected a joint bid by IC360 and IXUP to develop a new first-of-its-kind centralized self-exclusion system for Ontario’s gaming market to help protect vulnerable players.

iGaming Ontario Act severs tie between AGCO and iGO

Otton’s replacement and their new title aren’t the only change coming for iGO in 2025.

When Ontario approved its fall 2024 budget measures at the end of October with Bill 216, the Building Ontario For You Act, 2014, included Schedule 9, which passed the iGaming Ontario Act.

The act, which was approved on Nov. 6 but has not yet been enacted, officially ends the parent-subsidiary relationship between iGO and the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO). Until now, iGO has been a subsidiary of AGCO, but it will soon become a standalone, independent, board-governed corporation without share capital.

The iGaming Ontario Act will be proclaimed in early 2025, a spokesperson from the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General told Canadian Gaming Business. The spokesperson also told CGB that the change has been made in part to address a concern of a conflict of interest raised by Ontario’s Auditor General.

The AGCO regulates the offerings of Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation (OLG), previously the only provider of approved online gaming in the province. Since the province’s market opened up in April 2022, OLG’s commercial competitors have been regulated by the AGCO and, unlike OLG, conducted and managed by iGO.