The online gambling ecosystem in Ontario is the most modern of the Canadian gambling markets, with a well-regulated and rapidly maturing market.
The online gambling ecosystem in Ontario is the most modern of the Canadian gambling markets, with a well-regulated and rapidly maturing market. Canadian regulators have imposed severe restrictions on a number of aspects in this market in the interest of player protection and consumer safety. When it comes to restrictions on advertising, some industry stakeholders claim they are too restricted, while other groups say they aren't restricted enough.
While the larger regulatory environment for online gambling in Canada is slowly progressing, one province has leapt well ahead of the rest and is displaying a well-regulated and healthy online gambling ecosystem. Ontario has had an open online gambling market since early 2022, and it is maturing at a rapid pace. Ontario allows private operators to acquire licences and offer residents in the province no deposit casino bonus offers and other online gambling services, as long as they abide by the regulatory strictures that iGaming Ontario (iGO) sets out for them. But despite the rapidly advancing maturity of Canada's biggest online gambling market, there is a lack of agreement on how online gambling can or should be advertised.
The iGO has displayed a relatively heavy emphasis from day one of the regulated market for ensuring that players are protected and consumers are kept safe. This includes ensuring that minors and other vulnerable groups are not exposed to predatory advertising practices. But some industry stakeholders are claiming that the advertising restrictions leave them with their hands tied, while other groups are claiming that the restrictions are not restrictive enough.
Let's take a closer look at the broader Canadian online gambling market, Ontario's specific situation, and what the restrictions are for advertising and why some different groups are unhappy with those restrictions.
Similar to many other jurisdictions, Canada has allowed its provinces and territories to take charge of their own gambling regulatory environments. This applies to both physical land-based casinos and to online gaming and sports betting.
While this type of broader gambling environment is common, it is not an environment that lends itself to clarity. Many Canadian provinces have government-run lottery operations, which also offer relatively small online casino platforms to residents.
The exception to the rule in Canada is Ontario. In April of 2022, Ontario launched a fully regulated iGaming market. As long as they abide by the regulations that the provinces' overseeing body sets forth, private companies are allowed to offer their services to Ontarian residents. Naturally, this has made Ontario's online gaming market much more valuable than the others in Canada, and the province has seen a large windfall of tax revenue from this market.
The online gambling market in Ontario is overseen, as we mentioned earlier, by iGaming Ontario, which is itself a subsidiary of the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario, which is the body that sets out the actual requirements for licences and regulatory standards. iGO is responsible for managing the private companies that enter the market and ensuring that everything is operating as intended.
The idea is that while private operators can enter this market, the province has overall control over what happens and what is available. Proponents of Ontario's online gambling market have praised the increased transparency and improved consumer protection that it has brought to the province's online gambling ecosystem.
This open type of market is one that sees fierce competition between operators. Online gambling markets can be incredibly lucrative, and operators are, obviously, keen to make the most of the opportunities that are presented to them. This has resulted in operators pushing aggressive advertising campaigns, especially around major sporting events. This increasing advertising pressure is giving regulators pause and causing them to rethink the regulations around gambling advertising in the province.
While the Ontario online gambling market might not have started with many restrictions around advertising, regulators were relatively quick to introduce some. The Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario has introduced a number of amendments to the rules surrounding advertising, with the more important ones being introduced in February 2024.
Among other things, these changes made it so that operators must not:
In addition to these advertising rules, Ontario also introduced a slew of rules around offering promotions to players. Operators are no longer allowed to widely offer gambling bonuses to the general public; instead, they can only target players who opt in to such advertising.
While the intention of the iGO and the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario is to better provide protection for players and safety for consumers, their advertising restrictions are coming under fire.
On one hand, there are some regulators and community groups who claim that these restrictions are not enough. They state that gambling advertising present in high-visibility media needs to be curtailed. Some groups are pushing for the introduction of a total gambling advertising ban, similar to the systems in Spain or Italy.
On the other side of the fence, many industry stakeholders are pointing out that the advertising restrictions in Ontario are some of the strictest in the world. They state that any further restrictions will make it difficult, or even impossible, for the legally regulated online operators to compete with illegal offshore platforms, which operate without any restrictions.
While it is beyond our remit to favour either side, the conflict between these groups does point out an interesting dichotomy. A large part of Ontario's goal in creating a regulated online gambling market in the first place was to draw players away from illegal offshore operators and into an environment where there was some oversight and better consumer protections. If advertising restrictions were to drive players back towards unregulated offshore platforms, the system is not exactly working as intended.
Ontario's regulators have a fine line to walk ahead of them. They must try to protect their players and consumers as they see best, but going too far with their restrictions might have the exact opposite effect of what they want.
