OLG Continues to Thrive as Ontario’s Original Sports Betting Operator

Dave Schwab Sports Betting Expert

3 minute read

The Canadian province of Ontario has been front page news since April 4 when it comes to legal sports betting. That day marked the start of Ontario’s commercial sports betting and iGaming industry.

Prior to that date, the only legal from of online gambling in the province was through a government-owned operator. The Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation (OLG) was the only game in town. The online betting platform in place was PROLINE+.

Government owned and operated lottery corporations are still running the entire industry in Canada’s other provinces. Ontario stepped out of the box in an effort to fully capitalize on a significant change in Canada’s sports betting laws.

In August of 2021, it became legal to bet on single-game sporting events. Prior to that change, the only legal way to bet on sports in Canada was through multi-team parlays.

Now that commercial operators such as FanDuel and BetMGM are active in Ontario, OLG has been working hard to maintain its hometown edge.

In the absence of a monopoly on sports betting and iGaming, PROLINE+ has been doing everything possible to hold on to its existing betting base. These efforts have been paying off with an impressive weekly betting handle since early April.

Heading into May, OLG’s PROLINE+ took in the most betting volume since the week leading up to the Super Bowl. Local teams such as the NBA’s Toronto Raptors and NHL’s Toronto Maple Leafs remained big draws. MLB’s Toronto Blue Jays have also contributed to the large betting handle with their strong start.

OLG has credited its loyal customer base for its continued success in what is now a highly competitive marketplace. PROLINE+ faced some stiff competition from gray market sportsbook operators in the past. The platform’s ability to compete against legal commercial operators is a testament to the quality of the gaming products offered.

David Pridmore is OLG’s Chief Digital and Strategy Officer. His recent comments on the current market dynamics included:

“Our performance has been steadily growing on the same trajectory that we’ve been seeing since pre-launch. We have a pretty focused customer group that continues to play with PROLINE (retail betting) and PROLINE+ (online) and we obviously want to take care of our core customers and introduce new customers to the product.”

David Pridmore, OLG Chief Digital and Strategy Officer

Citing the previous problems with gray operators in the Ontario market, he went on to add:

“From an Ontario perspective, I think this is great. There were a lot of illegal operators and now that money can go to Ontario. From OLG’s perspective, we’ve always been in a competitive market (with gray operators). Our world doesn’t change too much, other than we’re hyper-focused on delivering what our customers need.”

David Pridmore, OLG Chief Digital and Strategy Officer

Written by Dave Schwab, our US sports betting industry expert.

The featured image for this post was sourced on Getty Images.

Dave Schwab

Dave Schwab has been covering the sports betting industry for the past 12 years as the main focus of his specialty marketing company for online content. This endeavor followed a previous career in the field of sales and marketing in the wholesaling sector.Most of his weekly pieces focus on the rapidly expanding legal US sports betting industry. However, he still does extensive work covering betting angles that can provide a competitive edge to avid players. Dave believes that it is always a challenge to take past results and current form to try and correctly determine a future result. Sports brings out the unpredictability in what should be a fairly predictable outcome based on the stats, facts and recent trends in a particular matchup. More from Dave Schwab