Canada Sports Betting

While April 4, 2022, will mark a significant shift in the Canadian sports betting landscape with the introduction of regulated sports betting in Ontario, the country's gaming history goes back much farther than that.

Here's a look at the biggest moments and milestones in Canadian sports betting history:

On the heels of Parliament characterizing specific gambling activities as "Offences against Religion, Morals and Public Convenience" in the late-1880s, the federal government enacted the Canadian Criminal Code, which rendered all gambling activity illegal (including raffles and horse racing).

This set the stage for rampant underground gambling and other associated criminal activity, prompting the first in a series of gambling-related amendments made to the Criminal Code which relaxed the restrictions on gambling across a wide variety of sports and games of chance.

Less than 10 years after the Criminal Code was put in place – and due in part to protestations from the public – the federal government eased restrictions on gambling in Canada, allowing organizations to hold raffles or bingo games provided that the proceeds went to charity.

A much more significant development followed in 1910. Following a lengthy inquiry of horse race wagering by the Select Committee House of Commons, the government determined that legal betting could take place exclusively at racetracks.

This decision not only provided Canada with its first licensed and regulated form of sports betting, but it moved the nation's gambling industry more in line with the United States, which had been participating in legal wagering on horse races since the mid-1800s, and Europe, which also had a storied history of horse race betting.

Just as Canadian racetrack betting was beginning to hit its stride, the Great War (World War I) sent everything into turmoil. Following a detailed investigation by the Royal Commission in Racing Inquiry, wagering on horse racing was indefinitely suspended in 1917, having been labeled as "wasteful" and "incommensurate with the war effort."

In 1920, three years after the suspension was first enacted and two years after the end of the war, betting at racetracks was reinstated using a pari-mutuel system that first rose to prominence overseas; a pari-mutuel setup sees the "house" pool all of the wagers together before taking a cut (the vigorish, or "vig") and then dispersing the leftover amount among all successful bettors.

While the racetrack betting industry continued to grow in the decades to follow, there wasn't much progress made elsewhere with regard to legal wagering in Canada.

In 1925, three years after the government made participating in a wide range of games of chance illegal, many of those games were permitted at events like fairs or exhibitions. These games included "wheels of fortune", where participants can wager on which "space" a spinning wheel will land.

In 1938, rules were relaxed further, with certain social clubs permitted to host gambling events provided that those clubs did not take a cut of the money.

The 1950s saw a Special Joint Committee of the House of Commons and Senate convene to discuss the need for legal clarity regarding lotteries; they concluded that lotteries would not be permitted at that time, dealing Canadian gamblers a major blow.

The movement to open up more gambling options for the provinces and territories gained traction in 1967, when then-Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau expressed interest in amending the Canadian Criminal Code to allow for regions to provide and govern their own lotteries.

The original 1968 bill was shelved when Parliament was dissolved ahead of the federal election, but with Trudeau's Liberals re-elected in a majority, an identical bill was tabled and subsequently approved in 1969 – setting the stage for Canadians to have more gambling options than ever before.

It didn't take long for the majority of provinces to implement their own lotteries. Quebec was the first, in 1970, followed closely by Manitoba, Alberta, Saskatchewan and British Columbia; the four provinces joined forces to create the Western Canadian Lottery Foundation in 1974.

Yet, while the provinces eagerly added lotteries to their tax revenue options, the federal government saw potential, as well – creating the Olympic Lottery Corporation to hold lotteries coinciding with the 1976 Summer Games in Montreal. Piggybacking on the success of the OLC, Loto-Canada was formed – and ran in direct competition with the provinces, which rankled many of them.

This became a heated issue across multiple federal elections; the Liberals wanted Loto-Canada to remain in place, while the Progressive Conservatives were willing to turf it in exchange for payments from the provinces. And after winning a majority in the 1984 election, PM Brian Mulroney's team agreed to axe Loto-Canada late in 1985 in exchange for $100 million from the provinces over a three-year period, the bulk of which would go toward the 1988 Winter Games in Calgary.

As great as it was that the provinces were no longer competing with the federal government for lottery revenue, there was an even more significant development late in 1985. The Conservative amendment to the Canadian Criminal Code (Bill 81-C) forever changed the Canadian gaming landscape thanks to a pair of key inclusions:

Despite these significant changes to the Criminal Code, traditional sportsbook operators were still considered illegal – though that didn't prevent them from making their presence felt in Canada as the Internet grew in popularity. The first notable homegrown sportsbook, Sports Interaction, launched in 1999 after registering with Kahnawake Mohawk Territory, a First Nations reserve on the shore of the St. Lawrence River in Quebec.

With dozens of online sports betting sites able to operate within Canada (aren't loopholes great?), provincial governments were missing out on tens of millions of dollars in potential annual tax revenue. These "grey market" books were able to operate freely because they were either headquartered outside Canada, or (in the case of Sports Interaction) were licensed on First Nations territory.

The Canada Criminal Code prohibited people from either making bets in a physical location within Canada, or from accepting bets within the country. Since these online sportsbooks were doing neither, they weren't breaking any laws. They were, however, considered "unregulated", which meant that the government would not step in if a player had a dispute over winnings or withdrawals.

NDP Member of Parliament Joe Comartin tabled a private member's bill (C-290) in 2011 which sought to amend the Criminal Code to allow for single-game wagering. The bill passed unanimously through the House of Commons and subsequently landed with the Senate – but staunch opposition from prominent politicians and the four major North American pro sports teams left the bill for dead.

Ipsos polls taken over an eight-year period from 2010-18 illustrate the growing popularity of sports betting in Canada: Just 18% of respondents age 18-34 had placed an online bet in 2010, but that number grew to 32% in 2014 and to 52% in 2018.

Those trends, combined with sagging casino revenues and the U.S. Supreme Court repealing PASPA in 2018 to set legal sports betting in motion south of the border, kicked off a new groundswell of support for single-game wagering in Canada.

Bill C-218 was sponsored in February 2020 by Conservative MP Kevin Waugh, who had backed the previous sports betting bill nearly a decade earlier. And this time, there was considerably more support for the introduction of legal single-game sports wagers.

The bill was no sure thing; for starters, it didn't carry nearly the same weight as a government bill. And with a handful of senators predictably opposed to the bill and what it could mean for the integrity of sports, there was work to do to get it over the finish line.

Yet, despite these challenges (along with delays due to the turmoil surrounding COVID-19), Bill C-218 passed through a third reading and was adopted with ease by the Senate in June 2021. It was given royal assent shortly after, then passed into law by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau – formally giving provinces the authority to implement their own single-game wagering legislation.

Ontario was the first province to dive into the single-game sports betting world, officially opening for business April 4, 2022.

Each province and territory within Canada is responsible for determining its own set of sports betting regulations and restrictions. Here are the main governing bodies for the most notable provinces:

Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO)

iGaming Ontario (IGO)

Loto-Québec

B.C. Gaming Policy and Enforcement Branch (GPEB)

Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis (AGLC)