By the end of the decade, Canada’s online gambling market is forecast to more than double in size by reaching USD $8.7 billion in revenues – a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 14.3%.
By the end of the decade, Canada’s online gambling market is forecast to more than double in size by reaching USD $8.7 billion in revenues – a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 14.3%. To put that into perspective, the historical CAGR average of the S&P 500 sits around 10% including dividends, which puts the Canadian online gambling industry into the territory of a very good – excellent investment.
Good investors don’t just follow the numbers through. Good investors instead, take a look under the head to analyse what is going on, and find out what exactly is fuelling that headline growth. In this article, we play the role of the savvy investor as we examine the Canadian online gambling industry and lay all our findings out on the table.
The Current Lay of the Land
In 2025 Canadian online gambling revenues were just short of USD $3 billion, with new online casinos appearing on the scene on an almost daily basis, according to industry experts Casino.ca. Naturally, you might look at that figure and wonder what on earth has led industry experts to forecast such dramatic growth over the course of the next four years.
If you delve a little deeper into the contemporary landscape however, you’ll quickly realise that the largest factor influencing future growth is the impending sceptre of widespread legalisation. Currently Canada has a provincial approach to online gambling, with some provinces fully legalising the remote sector and others not.
That’s largely down to the country’s antiquated online gambling laws that allowed native and state-licensed companies to operate, but made it impossible for others to join in. A government led review however has been ongoing for the past couple of years and the results are due to be announced in the first half of 2026.
It’s expected that the announcement will reveal the nationwide adoption of an online gambling framework much like that in the United Kingdom, with widespread legalisation and a national commission in charge of regulation. Naturally, that would put a lot of companies in line to earn a lot of money, but just how much are we talking about exactly?
The CA$4 Billion Black Hole
The new online casinos that come onto the market following widespread legalisation are going to be fighting it out over a $4 billion windfall of revenue. Why $4 billion? Because that’s the amount of money wagered each and every year by Canadian online gamblers with overseas companies.
Over the past 20 years, providers from predominantly the United Kingdom and other European countries have filled the void left by inadequate Canadian legislation.
Whilst the widespread legalisation of domestic based online gambling won’t totally eradicate the money spent with overseas providers, tax breaks for domestic companies have been rumoured. These breaks would allow them to pass on savings to customers and thus make themselves more appealing than overseas competitors.
If this can be combined with an approach that mirrors Ontario’s open iGaming market which encourages competition, innovation and consumer choice – think a burgeoning neo-liberal sector/economy – then forecasts of a doubling, and perhaps even trebling in Canadian gambling revenues isn’t too hard to imagine.
The Pitfalls to Growth
The obstacles to this phenomenal growth in the Canadian wagering sector are twofold. Firstly, there is the slim possibility that legislation will not go far enough, or will be watered down to the extent that it damages the industry.
With a truly neo-liberal Prime Minister in Mark Carney at the helm though, this seems unlikely. The second obstacle to the growth of the industry however is a far more realistic and potentially damaging one – America.
The United States under Donald Trump and the ‘Make America Great Again’ movement is a huge threat to the global economy. Not only is the volatility of tariffs and repeated foreign wars difficult to understand, but they are also hugely detrimental to the markets.
From a purely Canadian perspective though, there remains the very real possibility of a prolonged and protracted trade war between the two countries. Thus far President Trump has kept his attacks on Canada limited to tariffs, our minerals and repeated claims of annexation.
There are fears however, that Trump and the MAGA movement could up the ante and inflict even more devastating economic punishment on her ‘allies’.
Last year for example, following investigations into Benjamin Netanyahu by the International Criminal Court (ICC), the Trump administration froze the assets of ICC officials and ‘turned off’ their access to US based services such as Google, Microsoft and Visa.
If Trump were to decide to take this course of action with Canada, a country seemingly determined to stand up to him, then it could have a catastrophic impact on the revenue projections for the Canadian gambling industry.
Like the UK and France, Canada is actively exploring alternatives to American based services like Google, Microsoft and Visa, but there isn’t expected to be movement on these developments until at least 2030.
So, like almost everything investment in the modern world, the numbers look good and investing seems appealing. But, there is one Donald Trump sized spanner in the works that could blow at any time…
