Canada is again having a moment of concern about advertising for online sports betting, a recurring phenomenon that is tied to the country’s decriminalization of single-game wagering and Ontario’s decision to license a small army of private-sector iGaming operators.
- Concerns about unregulated online gambling and its advertising in Canada date back well before the 2021 legalization of single-game sports betting and the launch of Ontario’s regulated iGaming market.
- Government documents reveal that provinces have long struggled with offshore "grey market" operators using loophole advertising tactics to reach Canadians.
- As debates around stricter federal regulation continue, industry stakeholders remain divided, with Ontario’s model drawing both praise for its safeguards and criticism for its spillover effects into other provinces.
Yet those two policy decisions were driven in part by widespread gambling that Canadians were already doing with online sportsbooks and casino sites that were regulated abroad or outside provincial jurisdiction, but not by a province itself.
Internal government documents also show that concerns about online gambling and online gambling-related advertising existed before lawmakers gave the green light to single-game wagering.
The documents acknowledge the so-called “grey market” for online gambling in Canada that has long existed. They also examine the advertising for those “grey” sites that continues to appear alongside that of provincially regulated operators.
Brian Dijkema, president for Canada at think-tank Cardus, says they want a complete ban on sports betting advertising. Notes that a reason for legalization was to capture existing grey and black-market activity, but if that were the case, there would be no need for advertising. pic.twitter.com/W4zp8gEktp
— Geoff Zochodne (@GeoffZochodne) September 25, 2024
The January 2023 memo to the deputy minister for the Department of Justice Canada was intended to provide “background information on the issue of the recent proliferation of gambling advertising across Canada and the continued prevalence of illegal online gambling providers.”
“While illegal online gambling has been an issue in Canada for years, the coming into force of former Bill C-218, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (sports betting), which permits betting on single event sports events, and the launch of iGaming Ontario has led to renewed attention to the issue both in the news media and in federal-provincial territorial fora,” the memo’s summary states.
The memo also says online gambling in Canada is "illegal unless practiced within an approved (provincial or territorial) lottery scheme or under the pari-mutuel exemption for betting on horse racing."
So "until recently," the memo (written after Ontario launched its competitive iGaming market via a new agency, iGaming Ontario) says the only legal online gambling was through government-owned entities like the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation’s iGaming site.
“Despite this, since the 2000s (and potentially before), there has been a relatively wide range of available options for online gambling that Canadians with minimal technological knowledge can access,” the document adds. “This gambling took place outside of those (provincial/territorial) Crown corporation websites.”
The memo then shifts to advertising efforts by these “grey” operators and the provinces' longstanding irritation and effort to curtail it.
“One common technique, for example, was to advertise 'free to play' websites (or simply their brand) in order to divert potential customers to their off-shore real money betting platforms,” the memo notes. “Some (provincial/territorial) jurisdictions have attempted to combat that action, such as a 2018 complaint by various provinces to Advertising Standards Canada.”
Advertising Standards Canada is "the only national not-for-profit advertising self-regulatory organization in Canada."
The complaint says the entities party to that 2018 complaint include gambling regulators in British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, and Nova Scotia.
According to a copy attached to the 2023 memo, the complaint “outlines the ways in which several advertisements ... violate specific provisions of the Canadian Code of Advertising Standards.”
“However, these advertisements are only intended to be a sample,” the December 2018 complaint adds. “There are many other similar advertisements, online and on other media modes (e.g., television, billboards, and magazines), with similar content that also violate the Code and it would be impossible to include them all.”
The complainants said they were encouraging Advertising Standards Canada to ask "unregulated online gambling providers" to knock it off and to provide a "broad notification to advise that advertising with the same or similar attributes also violates the Code and should not be permitted by Canadian media."
Ads nauseam
Another section in the memo, with the heading "Ongoing Work at Officials Level," is redacted entirely. Other sections pertain to Indigenous gaming, including the Quebec-based Mohawk Council of Kahnawà:ke's ultimately unsuccessful legal challenge of Ontario's iGaming model.
Covers emailed the Department of Justice Canada's media line for comment on the 2023 memo but did not hear back before this story was published.
At any rate, the nearly 3-year-old document is a reminder that Canada has long had a robust online gambling market that provinces and the federal government do not oversee or tax. That "grey" market (which some would just now say is a "black" market) also advertises itself publicly alongside iGaming operators that are provincially regulated and do pay tax.
Furthermore, provincial attempts to wipe out "unregulated" gambling advertising haven't worked. Case in point: in May, the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO) said it was still compelled to contact "more than a dozen traditional and digital media platforms, calling on them to stop promoting unregulated online gambling and sports betting sites like Bodog to Ontario residents."
This kind of advertising and wagering was happening before the boom in advertisements for provincially regulated sports betting operators that began back in 2021 or 2022. It is evidently still happening today.
Now, federal lawmakers have returned to Ottawa after their summer break, and another debate about further regulating advertising for online sports betting is about to ensue. How, or whether, lawmakers propose to further curb advertising by unregulated operators remains to be seen.
We appear headed for another big debate about sports betting advertising in Canada, spurred on by legislation in the Senate that has been passed once already:https://t.co/Kg1jI5I5Ji @Covers
— Geoff Zochodne (@GeoffZochodne) June 17, 2025
The main vehicle for legislative concerns about sports betting advertising appears to be Ontario Sen. Marty Deacon's Bill S-211, the proposed "National Framework on Sports Betting Advertising Act.”
A national framework for sports betting ads has been framed as a "fix" for some unintended consequences of legalizing single-game sports betting. And, as its name suggests, the bill would require the federal government to develop a national framework for sportsbook ads that would include ways to restrict such advertising.
Currently, S-211, which is similar to previously introduced and ultimately unsuccessful legislation, is awaiting further action in the appointed Canadian Senate.
However, the bill will likely get another long look from lawmakers after a Canadian Medical Association Journal editorial was published last week, stating that sports betting advertising “insidiously normalizes a harmful activity, and children are being exposed, to their detriment.”
“Canadian jurisdictions should act to eliminate all commercials that promote sports betting during broadcasts where minors are likely to see them,” wrote Drs. Shannon Charlebois and Shawn Kelly.
The editorial gave a shoutout to S-211, saying the bill “is only a start but must be expedited and passed now to protect Canada’s youth from the harms of exposure to aggressive sports betting advertising.”
Canada...
— Alfonso Straffon 🇨🇷🇺🇸🇲🇽 (@astraffon) September 10, 2025
Senator for Waterloo region wants to ban sports betting ads that lead to 'addictive behaviour' in youthhttps://t.co/SFSqdtkExE
But Canada’s gaming industry, via the Canadian Gaming Association (Covers is a member), has pushed back on the need for a federal framework for sports betting ads.
“Provinces have the tools and are in the best position to regulate,” Paul Burns, president and CEO of the Canadian Gaming Association, told a Senate committee last year. “(An) additional layer of federal regulation is not required.”
Let's get ready to rebuttal
The CGA also issued a response to the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) editorial, which acknowledged that gambling has risks but argued the impact “depends on regulation and individual circumstances.”
“As gambling becomes more embedded in digital platforms and everyday experiences, oversight and regulation are important to reduce potential harm,” the CGA said. “The CGA has encouraged provincial governments to strengthen regulatory frameworks to address issues related to unlicensed operators.”
In Ontario, the CGA noted, the province has a number of advertising-related regulations that provincially regulated operators must follow, such as restrictions on the use of athletes and celebrities in promoting iGaming sites.
The CGA also said that spending on online gambling advertising continued to decline last year and that iGaming ads accounted for 2% of total media ad spending.
This tracks with comments made in June at the Canadian Gaming Summit in Toronto. During an advertising-related panel discussion, thinkTV CEO Catherine MacLeod told attendees that of the 35,000 or so television advertisements “cleared” by the marketing and research association for the year to date, 88 were gambling spots.
“For over two decades, Canadians have had unrestricted access to unregulated online gaming and disregarding the existence of such activities or purporting that advertising is the cause of problem gambling would be unrealistic - and naïve,” the CGA said in its response to the CMAJ editorial.
The CMAJ editorial also hints at the fact that some of Canada’s issues with online gambling were there before federal lawmakers decriminalized single-game sports betting and before the new Ontario sports betting market opened.
“In a 2018 poll, 15% of Canadians aged 18-24 years endorsed problem gambling, compared with 7% in the general population,” the editorial notes.
However, in 2018, single-game sports betting in Canada was not legal, and the only form of provincially regulated online gambling in Ontario was via OLG.ca. Even then, OLG admitted that a lot of provincial gamblers were taking their business to other sites.
“Currently, approximately 500,000 Ontarians spend an estimated $400 - $500 million annually on grey market sites that are not regulated in Ontario,” the OLG said in August 2015.
Ontario now has more than 80 provincially regulated iGaming sites offering online sports betting, slots and table games, poker, and bingo. (S-211 only proposes going after sports betting-related advertising). That is because the province launched a new regulated market for online gambling in April 2022 that permits private-sector operators to participate.
No other province has done the same, although Alberta is working toward a similar regulatory framework that could launch next year.
The CGA has nudged other provinces toward taking an Ontario-like path, noting recent media reporting about a doctor treating teens who borrowed a credit card to gamble.
“However, in Ontario, since the market’s launch in April 2022, minors have not been able to open accounts with licensed operators,” the CGA said in its response to the CMAJ editorial. “We can’t say the same thing for provinces that haven’t chosen to regulate this activity and introduce safeguards.”
Pobody's nerfect
Even so, the launch of Ontario’s competitive iGaming market has created some headaches for other provinces.
Government-owned lottery and gaming corporations in those provinces have complained Ontario-licensed brands are advertising and taking bets in their jurisdictions without being authorized to do so.
This issue has been brought up by lotteries to federal lawmakers and in a court reference in Ontario. It was noted in the 2023 DOJ memo as well. Covers received the memo through an access-to-information request this summer, but it is also publicly available here.
“Recently, many (provincial and territorial) officials and other stakeholders (such as their Crown corporations) outside Ontario have renewed their concerns regarding gambling advertising within their jurisdictions,” the memo says. “They advise that online gaming sites that they have not authorized have stepped up advertising in order to further compete with legal PT ‘conduct and manage’ entities. Some of those providers have been authorized within Ontario under the iGaming Ontario marketplace, but do not limit their advertising to within that province. Providers authorized by Ontario often re-direct residents of other PTs immediately to their offshore (illegal) websites, rather than inform them that they must be a resident of Ontario to play.”
A group of government-owned lottery corporations (excluding those of Ontario and Alberta), the Canadian Lottery Coalition, has recently taken its campaign against unregulated gambling to the courts.
The coalition won an injunction in Manitoba against Bodog this summer, and the offshore sportsbook operator subsequently restricted access in the province. In that matter, the Manitoba Liquor and Lotteries Corp. (MBLL) had sought, among other things, to stop Bodog from advertising itself and offering its online gambling products to residents of the province, including through its ".net" site.
The relief granted by the judge included a requirement for Bodog and its affiliates to "cease any and all advertising targeted at or accessible to persons located in Manitoba."
It’s possible the lotteries continue that campaign against other operators and in other provinces.
"The continued advertising and promotion of illegal gambling sites gives Canadians the false impression that they are operating legally, which is not the case," said Pat Davis, president and CEO of the British Columbia Lottery Corporation, in a July press release. "Not only are many of these sites operating in offshore markets that leave no protection or recourse for the player, but they also divert revenues that would otherwise be returned to provincial governments and directed to much-needed programs and services."
