Could what happened to the American gambling industry be repeated in Canada? Since 2018, over 30 US states have made sports betting legal and Americans also love playing casino games too.
Canada hasn’t quite seen such expansion but a start has been made with big changes seen in Ontario and large numbers signing up to play online including at this website. Will other provinces follow in their footsteps?
The situation in Canada is a bit different than that in the US but there are some similarities. In the US, individual states were unable to have the final say on whether gambling laws were changed. That decision was in the hands of the Federal Government and they weren’t too keen on doing so.
For many years states such as New Jersey campaigned to get the rules changed despite plenty of opposition. 2018 saw a US Supreme Court Judge rule that it could be the individual state that could have the final say.
That ruling changed the US gambling industry forever and state after state began to change their gambling laws. This has led to huge amounts of gambling tax revenue being received by states, all handy in troubled economic times.
In Canada, the seeds of a similar expansion took root in Ontario. Each province is able to set their own gaming laws and a monopoly was put in place. Not that this didn’t stop Canadians signing up with private gambling companies. That was the position Americans had found themselves in when signing up with offshore sites to indulge in their desire to bet on sport.
That was a frustrating situation for politicians with residents gambling but without any tax revenue being received. There may always be concerns over people gambling as for some it does lead to problems. However, the lure of all those dollars of sports gambling tax revenue that can be received are hard to ignore.
A major frustration for Canadian gamblers was a certain part of the gaming laws introduced in the mid-1980s. It was impossible at that time to place a bet on a single event and that was only changed in recent years as rules were relaxed.
Online betting was gradually introduced as the betting industry began to change but private companies still weren’t getting a slice of the pie.
That changed in Ontario in 2022 with licenses being granted to private companies such as Caesars Entertainment, FanDuel and DraftKings. Doing this has resulted in a prosperous gambling industry in the province.
Now there are calls for other provinces to follow suit. That’s particularly the case in Québec where a recent survey revealed that 73% of over 1000 people questioned were already using privately run sites rather than the one used by the province.
The Québec Online Gaming Coalition is now calling on the province to change their laws just as Ontario has. 2024 promises to be an interesting year for the Canadian gambling industry.
