With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.
Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/1477631
READ THIS John A. Brink is the Prince George-based founder of the Brink Group of Companies, an umbrella corporation that manages subsidiaries in industries like lumber, warehousing and real estate. He also has ADHD. Brink's second book, ADHD Unlocked, details the ways in which he believes the condition can be harnessed as a "force for greatness in your life." Brink hopes to de-stigmatize ADHD and provide folks living with it a road map into how it can be used for one's benefit. "John Brink brings the uncomfortable into the light by giving up his secrets and the truths they tell," writes Prince George family doctor Tracey Lotze. "It is an extraordinary work." Brink Media 165 pages, hardcover, $25.47 £ also serve to drive up name rec- ognition even in jurisdictions like B.C. where their operations are legally prohibited. Segev believes these companies are banking on B.C. and other provinces following Ontario's lead. "They're hoping pro- vincial governments will see Ontario's enormous gains in revenue and follow suit," Segev says. "Then the companies that were prescient enough to run campaigns and gain user data- bases will have an advantage." Crystal Kwon of Front + Cen- tre Communications suggests that the surge in TV advertising could be tied to a lack of alter- native options for those busi- nesses: "Other advertisers have been moving toward different avenues like social media influ- encers and Facebook." Doug Johnson, chief ad sales officer of Vancouver-based BBTV, points out that, unlike cable TV, platforms such as YouTube require geo-tagging that restricts ads to specific ter- ritories. "You have to follow the rules of the platform," he says. It's not just sports betting flooding the airwaves—there are plenty of online casino ads running as well. "There are around 800 offshore gambling websites operating outside of Canada's legal framework across the country," Beebe says. "They may have ramped up their spending in response to the increase in ads from li- censed operators in Ontario." Free-to-play sites with .net addresses and non-gambling gaming sites like Zynga are not illegal. But Beebe says some "free" .net sites are a lure for more lucrative opera- tions. "Many online gambling websites market themselves in advertising as .net websites that aim to entice Canadians with advertised promotions to paid .com websites," he says. Although those gambling sites are not legally allowed in B.C., the ads and the sites themselves may fall into a legal grey area. Segev notes that while the U.S. Department of Justice cracked down on sev- eral gambling services in 2011, including Canada-based Poker Stars, Canadian officials have never gone to court to test the limits of their jurisdiction over offshore gambling operations. "There have been no Cana- dian attempts at enforcement against outside operators," Segev says. "Whether their businesses are legal or not has never been tested in court." As for crpto ads, their rise appears to be driven not by any regulatory changes but by a de- sire to establish dominance in a booming—if volatile—market. "These are new and emerging industries trying to establish their positions," says Kwon. Segev agrees, and adds that despite some dubious operators in the industry, cryptocurrency promotion is not a practice that Canadian officials can regulate effectively. "They're not just on TV," Segev says, "they're on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram. It's beyond the reach of Cana- dian regulators. It's not even cat-and-mouse—they're never going to catch that mouse. The Canadian government is not go- ing to turn off the internet." Perhaps unsurprisingly, Beebe says that BCLC is the best option for gamblers in B.C. "Simply put, when British Columbians play with BCLC's PlayNow.com, they are playing on the only legal, regulated gambling website in B.C. All profits generated by PlayNow. com go back to the province to help fund services for BCers, whereas we don't know where the revenue goes from unregu- lated operators. PlayNow.com players also know that their accounts are secure, and that they can easily withdraw their funds, unlike the experiences that players sometimes encoun- ter on some offshore websites." It isn't just advertising that's on the upswing—the sports betting market is booming ev- erywhere. BBTV's Johnson says sports betting ad sales in the U.S. are expected to rise to $3.6 billion in 2022 from $2.1 billion last year. "It's estimated that will increase to $10 billion by 2028," Johnson says. With numbers like that, B.C. audiences will surely con- tinue to see a steady stream of gambling pitches, regardless of provincial rules. £ ( the informer ) G O F I G U R E GO FIGURE: ISTOCK 12 BCBUSINESS SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2022 Thought and Sold As patent lawyers, trademark agents and IP wonks gather in Whistler this Sept. 28–30 for the Intellectual Property Institute of Canada's national conference, we take a look at the impact of our own "intangible economy" by Melissa Edwards BRITISH COLUMBIAN BUSINESSES SPENT $3,209,000,000 ON IN-HOUSE R&D IN 2020 63.9% SINCE 2015 In the last fiscal year, B.C. saw 799 patent applications filed and 212 patents granted. Patent applications filed across Canada in 2020/21: 37,164 85.2% originated from outside the country 18.2% OF BUSINESSES IN CANADA OWN SOME TYPE OF FORMAL INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY (2019) 31.1% of IP owners say their intangible assets have increased their revenue A Statistics Canada study of patent activity from 2001 to 2015 showed that businesses that had filed for a patent were: 7.5 points more likely to experience high employment growth 12.9 points more likely to experience high revenue growth