- Torstar Corporation, the owners of the Toronto Star and Hamilton Spectator newspapers, will launch a new online casino betting brand in Ontario in 2021.
- The company plans to use the funds from their online casino brand to make up for lost ad revenue of their newspapers with the hopes of keeping the papers in business.
ONTARIO, Canada – The Canadian online betting landscape is welcoming a new and unexpected player to the gambling scene in 2021.
The Torstar Corporation, the company behind the Toronto Star, Hamilton Spectator, and other newspapers, is a trusted name in news in Canada. The company announced this week, Torstar will be branching out into the world of online gambling, with plans to launch an official legal USA online gambling betting brand in Ontario sometime in 2021.
The move comes out of a need to fill in the financial gaps left behind by decreasing ad revenue from the newspapers.
Torstar was recently acquired by investment firm Nordstar, which promises to maintain the companies long-lasting goal of providing Canadians with “world-class journalism befitting the Star's storied history."
"We are excited at the prospect of participating in a regulated online Ontario gaming market with a made-in-Ontario product," said Corey Goodman, Torstar's chief corporate development officer, in a news release.
Torstar will be expanding into an online gambling market that brings in around $500 million a year in revenue.
Much of this profit has gone to international betting sites, but with Canada working on bringing legal betting into the state-sponsored territory, these profits could stay within the borders of the country in the near future.
With newspapers dwindling across the world, it is vital for companies to find creative and external sources of funding in order to keep these important newspapers in business.
Online gambling can be that resource for many companies in this same situation. Since online gambling is such an explosive business at the moment, getting in on the ground floor in 2021 is likely a terrific move by Torstar.
Time will tell if this business model is successful and is repeated by other companies looking to diversify their finances.