Ontario Government Supports Legal Sports Betting Model

Dave Schwab Sports Betting Expert

3 minute read

Legal sports betting in Canada was limited to parlay bets on multiple teams. Each of the country’s provinces offered online sports betting and other forms of iGaming through government-owned lottery corporations.

A push to update the sports betting laws in 2021 have led to major changes in Canada’s entire sports betting industry. As of Aug. 27, it became legal to place sports wagers on single games and individual sporting events.

Most of the country’s provinces decided to incorporate this change into their existing online gaming system. However, Ontario was the first to move towards adding commercial operators to the marketplace.

This was rather significant given that Ontario has the largest population base in the country. This immediately drew the attention of major US-based sportsbook operators such as FanDuel and DraftKings.

Market potential for legal commercial sports betting in Ontario has drawn interest from a number of sports betting operators.

As the province began its plan to expand, major pushback from Ontario’s auditor general made news headlines. Acting as an independent officer of the Ontario legislature, the primary role is auditing the public sector.

A review of the expansion plans raised various concerns. A published report states that “the iGaming model could be subject to legal challenges.”

The office of Ontario Attorney General Doug Downey released the following statement:

“Ontario is committed to creating a competitive new online gaming market to help protect consumers. Ontario has carefully designed the online gaming model so as to achieve that objective in compliance with the requirements of the Criminal Code that apply to Ontario.”

The new gaming market will be managed by iGaming Ontario. This is a subsidiary of the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario. Approved operators will run their gaming sites in the market on behalf of the province.

The province maintains the ability to control all the key elements of iGaming so they comply with all regulatory requirements.

The Ontario government compares the situation to the current network of land-based commercial casinos operating in the province. It has also heavily discounted the views of the auditor general’s report.

Currently, legal online sports betting and iGaming in the province is offered through the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp. The actual operator is PROLINE+. Plans to expand the market with commercial operators still have the first quarter of 2022 as the time frame for launch.

Ontario’s plan to expand the marketplace is unique to Canada. However, in recent weeks a few other provinces have released their plans to expand outside the existing government-run system.

In the absence of commercial sportsbook operators, wagers on single games remain limited to retail and online sites tied to government-owned lottery and gaming corporations.

From the start, this is a system that Ontario has been committed to change. And the change in law to single-game betting has been the driving force.

Written by Dave Schwab, our US Sports Betting Industry Expert. You can learn more about our author's expertise here.

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