Five years later: Canada’s legalization of single-event sports gambling in five charts

Five years ago, the federal government legalized single-event sports betting by passing the Safe and Regulated Sports Betting Act, ending the rules that effectively prevented provinces from opening their own private markets for sportsbooks and online casinos.

The legislation opened the door for different types of gambling, including bets on the outcome of single sports matches, which were previously only allowed as part of multi-leg parlays, and prop bets, which are wagers on specific small occurrences in games.

In the years since, online provincial gambling organizations – including PlayNow in British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Manitoba – have expanded to offer single-match betting. Ontario opened its market to private operators in 2022, where previously only provincial organizations were allowed to operate.

Alberta launched its own private online gambling market in July. Data from across Canada from the five years since single-event sports betting was legalized show what the province can learn, and what gaps still loom as other provinces could be considering doing the same.

Ontario’s gambling market is booming

While the federal legislation primarily dealt with sports betting, and much of the advertising focuses on sports betting, the biggest gains in gross revenue have been in online casinos.

“Once people get onto the platform, they’re funneled into online casinos because it’s just way more profitable,” says Matthew Young, chief research officer at Greo, an independent research organization that studies gambling.

Ontario’s gambling revenue per adult has shot up in the years since the private market opened. Other regions have seen some spikes in their gambling revenue per adult as well.

Gambling problems have never been more prevalent in Ontario

The proliferation of gambling advertising means that the number of new gamblers is growing, especially in Ontario.

While the percentage of Canadians who report betting on sports in the past year in Canada has decreased slightly since 2018, those who gamble on sports at least monthly increased from nearly a quarter to more than 40 per cent, according to a Statistics Canada survey.

In Ontario, the number of active player accounts on online gambling platforms has tripled since the launch of its private market.

Meanwhile, the number of average monthly calls to ConnexOntario, Ontario’s problem gambling hotline, more than tripled in the month following the province’s private market launch, and has stayed high.

This data, pointing to an increase in problem gambling behaviour, is not restricted to Ontario. The same StatsCan survey reports a rise in several problem gambling behaviours – such as betting more to cover losses and borrowing money to gamble – across Canada between 2018 and 2025.

Dr. Young calls the increase in problem gambling behaviours “significant.”

“These numbers don’t show panic-level increase, but it’s not a good direction.”

Unregulated gambling isn’t an issue everywhere

Ads for Ontario gambling companies appear in other provinces, since there is no national framework for gambling advertising, even though betting outside the province remains illegal.

“People in B.C., gamblers in recovery in B.C., youth in B.C., are exposed to quite high levels of advertising for something that they can’t legally access,” says Luke Clark, a psychologist who studies gambling addiction at the University of British Columbia. He says this exposure normalizes gambling and may lead people to gamble as a result.

The reason for proposing the bill, according to lawmakers who introduced it, was to move those who gambled on unregulated sites over to regulated platforms with more oversight – a concept called “channelization.”

New research published last month, led by researchers at the University of Lethbridge, casts doubt on the need for channelization, showing that in some regions, including the Atlantic provinces, the majority of players already gamble on provincially-regulated sites rather than on unregulated ones. Ontario did not provide data to the researchers.

“The idea is that organizations need to channelize because it’s really gambling on the illegal market that’s the danger,” says Dr. Young. But he says that channelization is only part of the reason for opening regulated markets.

“It happens to be aligned with commercial interests of the organizations that wish to penetrate markets that they haven’t opened up yet.”

Dr. Young points to proposed legislation, called the National Framework on Sports Betting Advertising Act, as a welcome measure to slow down the glut of advertisements in Ontario. The act aims to provide a national framework to regulate gambling advertising across the country.

He sees the growth of gambling among previous non-gamblers as one of the biggest problems facing the country right now.

“It’s very difficult to increase the number of people consuming alcohol within a province, or consuming tobacco, or consuming cannabis within a province, and not increasing harm to the population,” says Dr. Young. “Gambling is the same way.”