How broader sports gambling has fared in Ontario and how it may change next

Sports betting? It's been hard to avoid mention of it, if you live in Ontario.

Since the province launched its regulated online gaming market a year ago, you've likely seen the ads, heard the hype, and at this point, you know how to partake.

Canada made single-event sports betting legal in 2021, but Ontario was first to move ahead with a regulated sports betting program — allowing multiple operators to pro‐ vide legal, online sports gam‐ bling services.

This more liberalized world of sports betting has captivat‐ ed many Ontarians, who are providing enough busi‐ ness for more than two dozen companies to compete for this sports-related segment of the broader provincial online gaming market.

"From a consumer point of view, it's been a success," said Michael Naraine, an associate professor in the Department of Sport Management at Brock University, in St. Catharines, Ont.

"If you're a fan of of gam‐ bling and sports gam‐ bling, you've been happy with how things have rolled out."

Yet industry experts and operators say more changes are on the horizon for sports betting in Canada, as the product offerings evolve and the market matures.

Money being made

Twelve months in, the On‐ tario government appears satisfied with the state of the regulated online gaming mar‐ ket, which has operators of‐ fering casino and poker games, in addition to sports gambling services.

In an email, a spokesper‐ son for the Ministry of the At‐ torney General said On‐ tario's "safe, legal, and com‐ petitive online gaming mar‐ ket" is creating business op‐ portunities, protecting con‐ sumers and providing rev‐ enue that "helps pay for gov‐ ernment priorities."

Reporting from iGaming

Ontario (iGO), a subsidiary of the Alcohol and Gaming Com‐ mission of Ontario, shows bil‐ lions in wagers made in each of the first, second and third quarters of the online gam‐ ing market's first year. Fourth-quarter data is not yet publicly available.

But these totals don't break down the proportion of these wagers that come strict‐ ly from sports betting.

"Sports betting and online casino games are both per‐ forming well," iGO said via email, noting it "may provide specific breakdowns in future reporting."

These totals also don't in‐ clude the digital gaming busi‐ ness that the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation (OLG) accounts for, including its own sports-betting trans‐ actions. Its 2021-22 annual re‐ port notes OLG's PROLINE+ brand processed $1 million in wagers within days of singleevent betting being offered — and that was months be‐ fore the wider regulated mar‐ ket launched.

William Woodhams, the CEO of Fitzdares — a British bookmaker that now oper‐ ates in Ontario — said it ap‐ pears "the majority of money being wagered on apps and desktop" in the provinces is occurring via casino games.

"Until there's more sport product [to bet on], that's go‐ ing to be the way it is," he said.

'Always-on sports prod‐ uct'

The Fitzdares executive said there are key big-league sports that Ontarians are drawn to betting on — but those leagues don't run con‐ tinuously, year-round.

"What we have currently in North American sport are these big, blue ribbon mo‐ ments," Woodhams said, cit‐ ing the brief NFL season and March Madness as examples.

He said that leaves the do‐ mestic gambling market lack‐ ing "an always-on sports product," which ends up fo‐ cusing attention on "these big NBA, NFL, hockey moments."

Woodhams expects inter‐ est to grow in placing bets on a wider range of sports. That said, Fitzdares is hearing from customers who want to bet on curling.

The provision of in-play betting — or bets made dur‐ ing a game, about various as‐ pects of play or the match it‐ self — is another area of focus for the industry.

Woodhams said these of‐ ferings are highly appealing to participants and "are where the future of sports betting is."

But there are concerns about how such offer‐ ings may affect some of the people putting their money on the line.

Andrew Kim, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at Toronto Metropolitan University, said sports gambling was previ‐ ously offered on a more limit‐ ed basis — and involved less frequent activity by partici‐ pants, such as making selec‐ tions for a set of game out‐ comes and then waiting for the results.

"You make your picks and then what do you do? You sit back and you watch the game," Kim said in an inter‐ view last month.

But in-play betting opens the door to people being able to make many bets within a given game.

Kim points to a baseball game, which might involve a pair of teams collectively to‐ talling hundreds of pitches — each of which could be bet on.

"That's similar to a slot machine, if you think about the structural characteristics," he said.

"What this liberalization has done, it's introduced — now making it legal and avail‐ able — this potentially more harmful form of sports bet‐ ting."

Outside Ontario

The Ontario experience is of interest to other provinces — including in Alberta, where there is currently only one regulated gaming site in operation.

Karin Campbell, the man‐ ager of communications for Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis (AGLC), told CBC News via email that Play‐ Alberta.ca "has witnessed tremendous growth since launching its sports offering" a year and half ago, attribut‐ ing that to the related betting activities, but also newly avail‐ able access to online lottery services.

AGLC is "closely monitor‐ ing" Ontario's market experi‐ ence and Campbell said the regulator's focus "is to sup‐ port the successful and legal implementation of an ex‐ panded sports betting mar‐ ket."

In British Columbia, singleevent sports betting is also a key draw on PlayNow.com — the province's only legal regu‐ lated gambling website — where B.C. bettors placed $170 million on such bets in the first 12 months that it was legal to do so.

"Single-event bets account for the majority of all sports bets on [the site],"

Matt Lee, a spokesperson for the British Columbia Lottery Corporation, said in an email.

Given the interest in these services, Lee said the lottery corporation "continues to evaluate what sports-betting experiences" could be offered in future.

In Atlantic Canada, there is only one legal provider of sin‐ gle-event sports betting and that is the Atlantic Lottery Corporation. Spokesper‐ son Greg Weston said "sales have been strong since the option became available."

Peter Czegledy, a partner at Toronto's Aird & Berlis LLP and chair of its gaming group, suspects "On‐ tario will not be alone" in al‐ lowing private operators to compete with established government operators in on‐ line gaming — including sports betting — as time goes on. But he said the approach may differ among jurisdic‐ tions.

The future

Some industry watchers expect Ontario's market to have fewer companies in the mix in the long-term.

Brock University's Naraine predicts there will be some consolidation and some failures, eventually resulting in a core group of big compa‐ nies.

"We're essentially going to end up with seven or eight major players," said Naraine, pointing to the recent depar‐ ture of Coolbet as a sign the current market makeup may not be sustainable.

Czegledy notes it's likely that more operators may both enter and exit the On‐ tario market over time.

But to him, a more rele‐ vant question "is what kind of operators have or have not become regulated and what percentage of the overall mar‐ ket they represent," Czegledy said in an email.

"By those measures, in my estimation, Ontario has done well so far."