The History of Legal Sports Wagering in Canada: A Betlama Exploration

Canada’s relationship with sports wagering has undergone a remarkable transformation over the past several decades, shifting from a tightly restricted patchwork of provincial lottery-style parlay cards to a fully competitive single-event sports betting market. This evolution reflects broader changes in public attitudes toward gambling, the persistent pressure of illegal offshore markets, and a legislative process that moved slowly but ultimately produced consequential reform. Understanding how Canada arrived at its current regulatory framework requires tracing the legal, political, and commercial forces that shaped each stage of development.

From Parlay Cards to the Criminal Code: The Pre-Reform Era

For most of the twentieth century, sports betting in Canada was effectively prohibited under the Criminal Code of Canada, which classified bookmaking and pool-selling as criminal offences. The exception carved out in 1969, when Parliament amended the Criminal Code to permit provinces to operate lottery schemes, gave provincial governments limited authority to offer gambling products — but with a critical restriction. Section 207(4)(b) of the Criminal Code explicitly prohibited wagering on a single sporting event. Provinces could offer sports lotteries, but only in parlay format, meaning bettors were required to correctly predict the outcomes of at least two, and typically three or more, games simultaneously to collect a payout.

This restriction gave rise to products like Sport Select, operated by provincial lottery corporations such as the British Columbia Lottery Corporation, the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation, and others. These parlay-style tickets were widely available at convenience stores and gas stations, but they were structurally unattractive to serious bettors. The requirement to string together multiple correct predictions dramatically reduced the probability of winning, and the fixed odds offered by the lottery corporations were generally far less competitive than what offshore sportsbooks could provide. The result was predictable: a large and growing portion of Canadian sports bettors simply turned to offshore and illegal domestic operators, depriving provincial governments of substantial tax revenue.

Estimates from the early 2010s suggested that Canadians were wagering between $10 billion and $14 billion annually through illegal and offshore channels, while provincial lottery corporations captured only a fraction of that activity through their parlay products. The gap between legal and illegal markets was not merely a revenue problem — it also meant that millions of Canadians were engaging with gambling products that carried no consumer protections, responsible gambling resources, or regulatory oversight.

Bill C-218 and the Legislative Breakthrough of 2021

The push to amend Section 207 of the Criminal Code and permit single-event sports wagering had been attempted multiple times in the House of Commons before finally succeeding. Private member’s bills were introduced in 2011 and again in subsequent sessions, each time failing to advance through Parliament. The political will simply was not present to prioritize the issue, and concerns about problem gambling, the integrity of sports, and the influence of professional leagues kept the legislation stalled.

The breakthrough came with Bill C-218, the Safe and Regulated Sports Betting Act, introduced by Conservative MP Kevin Waugh in November 2020. The bill proposed a straightforward amendment: removing the prohibition on single-event wagering from the Criminal Code and allowing provinces to regulate the activity as they saw fit within their existing gambling frameworks. The bill passed second reading in the House of Commons in February 2021 and received Royal Assent on June 29, 2021, coming into force on August 27, 2021. The legislative change was narrow in scope but enormous in practical effect — it transferred the authority to license and regulate single-event sports betting entirely to the provinces, which already had the infrastructure and regulatory bodies in place to act quickly.

Ontario moved fastest and most ambitiously. Rather than simply expanding its existing OLG sports betting offering, the province chose to open a competitive private market. The Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO) developed a new regulatory framework, and iGaming Ontario — a subsidiary of the AGCO — was established to enter into operating agreements with private operators. The Ontario market launched on April 4, 2022, making it the first regulated open-access online sports betting and casino market in Canada. Within its first year of operation, iGaming Ontario reported over $37 billion in total wagers, with sports betting representing a substantial portion of that volume.

Other provinces took more conservative approaches. British Columbia, Manitoba, and Quebec chose to maintain government-controlled monopoly models, expanding their existing lottery corporation offerings to include single-event betting without opening the market to private operators. Alberta announced plans for a private market model similar to Ontario’s, while Atlantic provinces continued operating through their respective lottery corporations. The result is a fragmented national landscape where the regulatory environment varies significantly depending on which province a bettor resides in.

The Ontario Model and Its Market Implications

The Ontario private market model has attracted considerable attention from operators, regulators, and researchers because it represents the most direct experiment in competitive sports betting regulation in Canadian history. As of mid-2023, iGaming Ontario had registered over 45 licensed operators offering sports wagering products, including major international brands that had previously served Canadian customers through grey-market arrangements. The transition from unregulated to regulated status for these operators required compliance with AGCO standards on responsible gambling tools, advertising restrictions, and data reporting — a significant operational shift.

The advertising environment in particular became a flashpoint. The volume and nature of sports betting advertisements that accompanied the Ontario launch drew criticism from public health researchers, addiction specialists, and sports broadcasters. In response, the AGCO tightened its Registrar’s Standards in 2023, restricting the use of athlete and celebrity endorsements in betting advertisements and placing additional limits on promotional bonus offers. These regulatory adjustments reflect an ongoing calibration process that is common in newly opened gambling markets, according to our experts at Betlama who track regulatory developments across multiple jurisdictions. The Ontario experience is being watched closely by other provinces considering whether to move toward a competitive model.

The question of market cannibalization — whether legal operators are genuinely capturing former illegal market participants or simply redirecting bettors who were already using provincial lottery products — remains an active area of research. Early data from iGaming Ontario suggested that a meaningful proportion of registered users were new to regulated gambling products, though methodological challenges make precise measurement difficult. What is clearer is that the tax revenue flowing to the province increased substantially, with iGaming Ontario contributing over $1.4 billion to the province in its first full fiscal year of operation.

Responsible Gambling Frameworks and the Road Ahead

The rapid expansion of legal sports betting in Canada has placed renewed emphasis on responsible gambling infrastructure. All licensed operators in Ontario are required to integrate tools such as deposit limits, session time reminders, self-exclusion options, and reality checks directly into their platforms. The province’s self-exclusion program, GameSense, was expanded to cover online operators, and operators are required to contribute to a responsible gambling fund administered by Responsible Gambling Council Canada.

Federal and provincial health researchers have begun publishing longitudinal studies examining whether the liberalization of sports betting has affected rates of problem gambling in the population. Early findings are mixed and complicated by the fact that the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted baseline gambling behavior measurements in the years immediately preceding the 2021 reform. Betlama, as a platform that covers Canadian sports betting markets, has noted the growing sophistication of responsible gambling requirements as a distinguishing feature of the post-2021 regulatory environment compared to the largely unregulated offshore market that preceded it.

Looking forward, several unresolved questions will shape the next phase of Canadian sports betting regulation. The prospect of federal-level advertising standards — potentially modeled on restrictions in the United Kingdom or Australia — has gained traction in Parliament, with multiple studies and committee hearings examining the issue. The question of whether provinces outside Ontario will move toward competitive private markets, or whether the government monopoly model will prove more politically durable, remains open. And the integration of emerging technologies, including in-play betting interfaces, cryptocurrency payment options, and AI-driven personalization tools, will continue to challenge regulators who must balance consumer demand with harm minimization objectives.

Canada’s journey from a country where nearly all sports betting was technically illegal to one with a regulated, competitive market in its largest province has been neither linear nor uniform. The 2021 amendment to the Criminal Code was a pivotal moment, but the regulatory work that followed — and continues — is where the practical meaning of that reform is being determined. The provincial differences in approach, the ongoing debates about advertising and consumer protection, and the sheer scale of the market that has emerged all suggest that Canadian sports betting regulation will remain a dynamic and consequential policy area for years to come. Betlama’s ongoing coverage of these developments reflects how much the landscape has changed and how much further it has yet to evolve.