Minors can have access to online sites, things like that.” It was about consumer protection,” Burns explained. “Money really wasn’t the first driver, actually. Going almost hand-in-hand with that, about 10 months later, the Ontario government then moved not only to offer single-game wagering through OLG, but also to open the market to private companies.īurns said the move by the province was in part to eliminate the grey market, which had two main issues: a lack of consumer protection and the fact that almost all of the money was heading out of the province. The federal government makes the betting laws in Canada while the provinces decide how to implement them, and there had been a push for a while to legalize single-game wagering in an effort to eliminate the grey market.Īfter two stalled moves by the federal government to legalize single-game sports wagering in the past 15 years, legislation finally came into effect in June 2021 that made betting on one game or event legal in Canada. the five to 10 per cent that traditional gaming houses see from sports wagering, according to Burns.

The provinces would see around a 30 per cent return on bets vs. While a parlay bet has a high payout, it also offers a much lower chance of winning. Single-game wagering had been illegal since the 1960s but provincial lotteries were offering legal parlay (multi-game) bets as the only legal form of sports betting. Prior to the government regulating the online market, Ontarians, much like the rest of the country, were wagering on so-called “grey-market” sites, which offered little protection to consumers.

“Everyone in Canada’s had access to it for more than 20 years.” “People were doing it and it was easily accessible,” Burns said. While the online gambling might seem like a more recent phenomenon due to the massive uptick in advertisements, Canadians have been wagering on the internet for at least two decades, according to Paul Burns, the president of the Canadian Gaming Association.

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