The Future of Online Gambling in Canada

One of the most dynamic and controversial markets of the entertainment industry is online gambling. In recent years online gambling has profited of a remarkable expansion worldwide, the number of users is augmenting rapidly as gambling platforms innovate each day to deliver new and more attractive and betting options. However, this industry also faces a great challenge with fast changing regulations of each country and of course Canada is not the exception.

In fact, Canada has one of the most dynamic and complex online gambling regulations now at days. Before analyzing the different forces and parties involved in the current Canadian panorama it’s important to remember that Canada doesn’t have a national regulator for online gambling, on the contrary each province has authority on this market which means there are several institutions that legislate and regulate this industry around Canada and not all provinces have the same opinion on which direction should the online gambling regulations should take.

Regulating online casinos is already a challenge and doing it through different institutions doesn’t make it any easier. Under the current regulation, Canadian users can place bets at any international gambling platform that is not based in Canada and in all online casinos based in Canada and approved by their provincial government. It is commonly said that online gambling industry requires of international collaboration as multilateral efforts are necessary to maintain a fair market and to enhance user’s security, in this sense Canada still has a long way to go to stablish an efficient dialogue nationwide to redirect the market. It wasn’t long time ago that Quebec tried to block the service of all international online casinos in the province, an unconstitutional solution that of course wasn’t viable to control the online gambling industry in Canada.

However not everything are sad news and political discussions for the Canadian online gamblers. In fact, there has been a considerable increase of online gambling in the country mainly due to a boom of online sport betting. According to the latest report of the Canadian Gaming Association 39% of sport bettors in Canada place bets online from whom 30% use a mobile device. And according to the Fantasy Sports Trade Association 19% of Canadians over 12 years play fantasy sports.

The eternal discussion of whether is positive or negative to mix sports and gambling continues, there are some postures more conservatives than others, however it is undeniable that each day there are more users interested in this exciting combination. In fact, according to a survey made to fantasy sport players by the FSTA, sports can get beneficiated by online sports betting, more precisely by fantasy sports. According to their study; 64% of players watch more live sports and 61% read more about sports since they started playing fantasy sports.

The expansion of online sport betting has been a great driver of the growth of Canadian regulated gambling platforms. One of the clearest examples is the incursion of the Ontario Lottery Gaming Corporation in sport betting, OLG will try to promote not also traditional bets and fantasy sports but they are also focusing on novelty betting and eSports, a betting category with enormous potential among Canadian bettors. Another highlight of this trend in the market is BetStars, the online sport betting platform that The Stars Group just launched in 2016 however both OLG and BetStars would have to keep their game up to compete with the most popular online sport betting platforms, according to the study of the Canadian Gaming Association the sites the more frequently used by bettors in Canada are Bet365 and Proline, 49% of their respondents said they use these platforms for placing sport bets. As the competition will get more intense between online casinos we’ll surely see innovations in betting modalities and live betting capabilities as well as very attractive promotions in the market.

In conclusion, the forecast for the Canadian online gambling industry are changes, innovations and adjustments. We sure expect some movement not only on the political and regulating area, but we can also expect innovations on the gambling offer.