The online casino industry has experienced unprecedented growth in the last decade, with players keen to experience the virtual equivalent of Las Vegas. Players based in Canada, however, had to watch from the bench.
You see, until 2021, online gambling simply wasn’t possible in the country. While others had the convenience of a fully-fledged casino on their smartphones, online gaming was as far as Macau for most Canadians.
But now, the industry is finally reaching full throttle, matching the growth numbers elsewhere in the world.
Yes, It’s Still a New Frontier
Canada is only three years into this experiment, and at the start, it was taking baby steps to test the waters. First, the federal government needed to legalize single-game betting, which they did in 2021. This would then spread across the provinces, including British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Quebec, Newfoundland and Labrador and, the largest of the provinces, Ontario, which would begin servicing its 15.6 million residents ten months later.
In a forward-thinking move, the province decreed that private companies would also be allowed to operate legally within Ontario, provided they obtain the correct provincial gambling license.
Because the industry is not quite mature yet, being just a few years out of a legal gray zone, options for players are still a little limited compared to established gambling havens like the United Kingdom, for example. Nevertheless, sites like playcasinos.ca offer a variety of online casinos accessible to players across Canada's provinces, with the expectation that options will grow exponentially in the coming years.
Pre-2021 Gambling in Canada
Single-game gambling was illegal from the 1960s, yet Canada has always had a strong casino tradition. The reason many Canadians have experience with games of chance is that it has always been a decriminalized activity, essentially operating in a bit of an undefined legal area.
Once online gambling sites started flooding the internet in other countries, Canadians were quick to want a small slice of the iGaming pie. While companies were not allowed to operate within the country, the same did not apply to individual gamblers.
Effectively, Canadian players have been signing up to gambling sites based abroad for approximately two decades. The chance of prosecution was close to nihil, with no individual ever taken to court for gambling on offshore websites.
This sounds like an advantage to players, which for most gamblers, it is. You have more options, competition drives Canadian companies to offer an industry-standard product (a core component of basic economy theory), and it ensures a fair price, across the board.
But the wider picture is a little more complicated and nuanced than that.
The Problems of Offshore Gambling
There were two clear reasons why the Canadian government finally relented on the gambling issue. First, gambling is a clear winner when it comes to tax revenue.
The industry is a very significant player in the wider economy, and it continues to grow year-on-year. Many Canadians were gambling pre-2021, but the government was not benefitting from this market explosion. Instead, money continued to flood out of Canada and to other countries where gambling was an established industry. We’re talking millions of dollars of potential tax revenue every single year.
Second, the government was concerned with consumer protection. Once players decide to gamble abroad, they take on the risk. There is no regulation or clear procedure, consumers are left to their devices. If there is a problem or complaint, there is nowhere that the Canadian player can turn to.
For most gamblers, this isn’t an issue. As long as you gamble on a website with an official stamp from a trusted government agency (in Ontario, for example, it’s managed by the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario), you’re generally going to be fine. It doesn’t matter whether the casino is based in Canada or Gibraltar, for argument’s sake.
But for the novice player, it can be tricky to know how to pick a foreign casino. And the Canadian government has no assurances or control, no way of ensuring ID checks are conducted properly, or that there is no fraud taking place. Now, as long as players stick to Canadian websites, there is a level of security and peace of mind in place.
What’s Next?
They say that once you open the online casino floodgates, you can never go back. We can’t see Ontario reversing the decision to introduce a robust regulatory framework for the industry, especially considering the results.
Gamblers are not only increasingly turning to locally based websites, but we’re also seeing an uptick in the overall number of players. iGaming is becoming the dominant player in the gambling industry, with land-based establishments scrambling to maintain a market foothold.
Expect Canadian lawmakers to refine their legislative framework, improve its processes to provide first-class consumer protection, and expand the number of licenses given to new companies. With tax revenues looking very healthy indeed, consumers satisfied with government-backed casinos, it’s fair to suggest Canada will become a leading industry player in the coming years.
