CANADA EDGING CLOSER TO LEGAL SPORTS BETTING
Most provincial governments eager to tap into huge new revenue stream
It’s a curious fact that Canada has permitted legal sports wagering for decades now, but only through provincial lottery systems that offer multi-event parlay bets at odds that would cause a bookie to blush.
That is, the only technically legal wagers available to Canadian bettors are terrible ones.
But that may be about to change. A private member’s bill introduced in Ottawa on Tuesday would alter the single line in the Criminal Code that prohibits wagering on a single sporting event, a revision that would allow provinces to offer everything from casino sportsbooks to smartphone betting.
And while this is just the latest attempt to legalize single-sports betting in this country — such backbench bills have been introduced several times and one was even passed in the House of Commons in 2012 before it was held up by the grabby hands of the Senate and killed by the 2015 election call — there are some factors that suggest it might actually happen this time.
Those factors are that the world has changed. The United States Supreme Court struck down a federal prohibition on gambling in 2018, allowing states to decide whether they wanted to legalize it. Those that have — 19 and counting — have experienced varying levels of windfall, as pentup demand has been released into the market. New Jersey alone reported more than US$540 million in legal wagers last month, an increase of more than 70 per cent from a year earlier, a number that has essentially created an overnight, auxiliary Las Vegas. As other border states such as Michigan, Washington and New York move to allow various forms of legal sports betting, there are growing fears that casino operations in Canada will be severely damaged by the lure of Vegasstyle competitors on the other side of the border.
The landscape has also shifted in another significant way: North America’s sports leagues haven’t just given up the battle, they have joined the opposing armies. Where gambling was once a lucrative open secret that professional sports operations professed to be deeply concerned about, they have now collectively decided that the lucrative part outweighs any concerns they might have about negative consequences.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver publicly supported legalized gambling not long after he took the job in 2014, saying it was time to “shine the light” on the massive gambling black market so it could be properly regulated and scrutinized, and over time his colleagues have followed his lead. The National Hockey League, National Football League and Major League Baseball each allowed varying degrees of partnership with the quasi-gambling daily fantasy industry, and once they had a taste of it, and the associated revenues, they dropped their long-standing formal opposition to the sports wagering industry as a whole. Casinos and betting operations now have sponsorship deals with each league, the NHL has a team in Las Vegas, and the NFL will soon have one there.
As flip-flops go, this is one of the flippiest. When that bill that would have legalized single-sports betting made it to the Senate in 2012, it was the professional leagues that offered strident opposition. The NHL’S submission to those hearings said single-game betting “poses perhaps the greatest threat to the integrity of our games.”
In 2018, when it was signing a partnership with casino giant MGM Resorts, an NHL executive said that the league had “no concerns about the integrity of our game, of our players, our officials.”
Funny, that. It’s probably just a coincidence that legal sports betting is a potential huge new revenue stream to leagues that have had varying levels of attendance and viewership problems in recent years.
That’s also a revenue stream that some Canadian governments are keen to tap. A majority of provinces have already indicated to Ottawa that they want to see the laws here changed, and they are supported in their efforts by border municipalities and tourism associations. Canadian-based technology and, obviously, gaming companies also say a legalized market would create jobs and economic growth.
Contrasting the economic arguments are concerns about the societal effects of widespread sports betting. All that revenue comes from somewhere — gamblers — and in places like the United Kingdom, where the gambling market is more mature, there are growing concerns that it has become far too pervasive.
Where all that will leave the minority Parliament in Ottawa is uncertain. The new bill was introduced by Saskatoon Conservative MP Kevin Waugh, taking over from Windsor MP Brian Masse because Waugh has an earlier slot for such legislative business, so it has multi-party support. But successful private member’s bills are about as rare as a bench-clearing NHL brawl, and because the provinces regulate the gambling industry, the revenues to be made would not help the federal treasury.
But there is also a spring budget being developed, and while Attorney General David Lametti has said that changing gambling laws is not a priority, it is at least possible that the governing Liberals could make a regulated sports betting market part of it.
The arguments for legalization, in which a billion-dollar black market would be subject to proper oversight and taxation, are similar to those made by the Trudeau government when it decriminalized the sale of marijuana.
But expecting a government to act a certain way because it has previously acted in a similar certain way is not something one should do with confidence. You might even say it’s a risky bet.
There are growing fears that casino operations in Canada will be severely damaged by the lure of Vegas-style competitors on the other side of the border.