Penn Entertainment CEO Jay Snowden has committed a $20m investment to Alberta’s online market, after revealing that Ontario is the biggest market for the operator’s interactive division.

Poor performance in the online space in recent years has seen Penn forced to consolidate its interactive division.

And looking at the company’s results in the round, high debt and rent burdens have led to the company reporting net losses over the past year.

Q1 results published in April continued a trend of recovery, but still reported a net loss of $2.8m.

While the firm’s Q2 figures exhibit a long-awaited return to net profit, the interactive division has remained loss-making.

That loss did decline in the latest report however, and shrinking year-on-year from $62m in Q2 2025 to $9.5m in Q2 2026.

Alberta to follow Ontario blueprint

Still, if Penn’s results in Ontario are anything to go by, the recent launch of Alberta’s newly regulated online market could be the thing to finally turn its interactive division towards making a profit.

Though Canadian results are not segmented out in the results report, during the earnings call, Snowden revealed to investors that Ontario is roughly level with its home jurisdiction of Pennsylvania for revenue generated by online casino.

But even more strikingly, for online sports betting, Snowden explained that Ontario generates around 2-2.5x more revenue, making it the company’s biggest online market.

If Snowden’s multiples are accurate, it would indicate that Penn generated sports betting revenue somewhere between $11.6m and $14.5m in Ontario for Q2.

With these being the margins the company is working with in its interactive division, the $20m investment committed to Penn’s first year of operation in Alberta seems a significant bet.

The company is banking on being able to consistently repeat similar results in that jurisdiction – though it is worth noting that Alberta’s population is significantly smaller than that of Ontario.

Considering the data the operator has seen for Alberta so far, Snowden said “it’s looking good.”

When asked if the operating framework in Alberta would allow Penn to acquire a similar market share to that in Ontario, CTO Aaron LaBerge could see no reason why not.

He commented: “First of all, our product has never been better. We’re going into a competitive market, but we’re spending aggressively relative to what we did in Ontario. And early results from a handle perspective, even though it’s a slow sports calendar, are very encouraging.”

Return on investment

It is indeed a highly competitive market, with 50 operators approved to operate in the province on the 13 July launch date, hence Penn’s decision to spend aggressively.

Penn CFO Felicia Hendrix clearly outlined the scale of the bet Penn is making by warning that the spend in Alberta is set to lead to the interactive division’s largest quarterly loss of the year in Q3.

If all goes to plan however, that will turn around quickly, and Hendrix added: “We expect the fourth quarter interactive segment adjusted EBITDA to be positive.” 

In terms of its expectations for the full year, Penn has cut the interactive division’s revenue guidance from $1.6bn to $1.57bn, but it has held the line with EBITDA, where it still expects to make a loss of $20m.

Penn’s Interactive segment is just one slice of the wider retail-heavy group, and the raised full-year retail segment guidance sits at $5.87bn in revenue and $1.96bn in adjusted EBITDAR.

While that dwarfs the numbers talked about in the interactive division, the upside of the online segment is that without depreciation of property or rent to be concerned with, EBITDA can be more efficiently converted into net income if the business is doing well.

 

 

 

 

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