Ontario DFS and poker fanatics may have cause to celebrate, as the highest court in the province has sided with a proposed plan that could help revive pay-to-play daily fantasy contests and expand poker games.
- A majority decision by Ontario’s Court of Appeal found that allowing local online gamblers to play peer-to-peer games with players outside Canada would remain lawful.
- The decision may pave the way for a potential return of daily fantasy sports and larger poker games in Ontario, though implementation could take time due to possible appeals and regulatory agreements.
- The ruling is a win for Ontario’s iGaming market, which has struggled with limited liquidity and the absence of major DFS operators since 2022.
On Wednesday, the Court of Appeal for Ontario issued a long-awaited opinion regarding the legality of letting Ontario-based online gamblers participate in peer-to-peer games with players located outside of Canada. A majority of appeals court judges that heard the reference (four out of five) concluded "that online gaming and sports betting would remain lawful under the Proposed Model."
The model pitched by the Ontario government to the appeals court would allow provincial gamblers to wager with and against players in other countries, but not in other provinces. That is, of course, unless Ontario first reached an agreement with those other provinces.
"In summary, the Proposed Model would permit players in Ontario to play peer-to-peer games against players who are physically situated outside Canada, and to bet on the outcomes," Wednesday's majority opinion said. "Examples of the peer-to-peer games that would be permitted include poker and daily fantasy sports wagering. The players located in Ontario and those in other countries would access these games through different web portals, with players in Ontario using the [Ontario-regulated] Sites, and players in other countries using websites or applications accessible in the jurisdictions where they are physically located."
This, the majority said, would be legal under Canada's Criminal Code.
Give it time
Wednesday's majority opinion could ultimately revive, rejuvenate, and expand paid DFS and online poker in Ontario. However, it could still take time before regulated daily fantasy contests and bigger poker games are launched in Canada's most populous province.
It’s possible (and perhaps even very likely) the opinion is appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada. That one appeals court judge dissented is notable. The four-judge majority (which included Chief Justice Michael Tulloch) also noted its opinion is based on several "assumptions," such as that players outside of Ontario but within Canada will not be allowed to participate unless an interprovincial agreement is in place.
Furthermore, the province will still have to strike acceptable agreements with other jurisdictions or operators to share iGaming-related liquidity. Meanwhile, Ontario-based operators will need to figure out how to offer games that comply with those arrangements.
"Many practical details about how the Proposed Model would operate remain undetermined," the majority opinion said. "The [Attorney General of Ontario] has explained that Ontario will enter into agreements with international operators, foreign state gaming regulators, or foreign jurisdictions. However, it is unclear who in the government of Ontario will choose the jurisdictions or entities with which Ontario would enter into agreements and who would negotiate these agreements."
Still, a win's a win. And Wednesday looks like a win for anyone who wants paid DFS back in Ontario.
OK, so the #breaking news from Ontario's Court of Appeal is this: a majority of judges agree that "legal online gaming and sports betting would remain lawful ... if its users were permitted to participate in games and betting involving individuals outside of Canada."
— Geoff Zochodne (@GeoffZochodne) November 12, 2025
Ontario's government referred the question to the appeals court regarding shared liquidity back in February 2024. A hearing was held last November that allowed the province and several other interested parties to make their case about how the appeals court should answer the following question:
"Would legal online gaming and sports betting remain lawful under the Criminal Code if its users were permitted to participate in games and betting involving individuals outside of Canada as described in the attached Schedule? If not, to what extent?"
Why it took nearly a year for the court to issue its thoughts about the reference could be due to a few factors. One may be the novel nature of the reference (no other court in Canada has tried to answer such a question), as well as a Manitoba court’s ruling in May against offshore sportsbook Bodog.
A footnote to Wednesday's decision said that the Canadian Lottery Coalition, a group of non-Ontario lotteries that intervened in the court reference, "wrote to the court to draw the panel’s attention" to the Bodog case.
DFS drought
Nevertheless, in Ontario’s view, sharing iGaming liquidity with U.S. states or other countries would be legal, as provincial players would remain under local regulation and their foreign counterparts would be overseen by their jurisdictions. In some ways, what the province was asking permission for is similar to what’s been done with poker in the U.S., where several states share liquidity for games.
The province also believed sharing iGaming liquidity with foreign jurisdictions would help the legal Ontario sports betting and iGaming market. That market is home to more than 80 sites offering sports betting, casino games, and bingo, but its requirement that all players be physically located in Ontario killed daily fantasy sports contests and limited the size of poker games.
Case in point: DraftKings and FanDuel shuttered their DFS businesses in Ontario before launching in the province’s new, regulated iGaming market in April 2022.
While the two operators still offer online sports betting and internet casino games in Ontario, they do not offer DFS, which is partly because the contests they could offer would be much smaller than they’d like. Ontario also treats pay-to-play fantasy contests as gambling, and so operators would be subject to the province’s iGaming rules and revenue-sharing requirements.
Other big names in DFS, such as PrizePicks and Underdog, have steered clear of Ontario. iGaming Ontario (iGO), the government agency through which private-sector operators can do business in the province, said in an affidavit that “Ontario’s closed liquidity model has discouraged some operators from seeking to offer games and sports betting in the province through iGO.”
Going after the grey
So, while it's estimated the lion’s share of online gambling in Ontario now takes place on provincially regulated platforms, approximately 20% of that activity may not. Some of that lost market share may even be due to players using DFS or poker platforms outside the provincially regulated system; providing for bigger poker games and for a way for major DFS operators to return to the province could help channel more play onto Ontario-regulated sites.
"The advent of the internet has made it very difficult to prevent people in Canada from accessing offshore gaming sites, which are unregulated by Canadian authorities and do not generate revenue that the provincial governments can use to provide public services," Wednesday's majority opinion said. "Allowing Ontario to regulate players within its borders who wish to play online games against players outside Canada advances public safety by bringing such gaming under protective regulation, thereby reducing such risks as fraud and addiction. As well, it furthers provincial choice by enabling Ontario to address the social and economic impacts of online gaming, while preserving revenue and providing accountability to voters."
The majority said they rejected a "restrictive interpretation" of a Criminal Code section allowing provinces to "conduct and manage" gambling within their borders. Doing so, the opinion said, "would undermine Parliament’s purpose in enacting that provision."
"As the legislative history demonstrates, Parliament favoured provincial regulation because unregulated gaming that lacks provincial safeguards is harmful to society, increasing the risks of crime, fraud, and addiction," the majority opinion added. "We accept the [Attorney General of Ontario's] contention that leaving extraterritorial online gaming unregulated in Ontario would foster those harms."
With all that said, not everyone in Canada believes Ontario should be able to connect its online gamblers with rivals outside the country. Most notably, several government-owned lottery and gaming corporations (the Canadian Lottery Coalition) pushed back on Ontario’s plans.
The objections of the non-Ontario lotteries were on legal grounds and because of concerns about Ontario-regulated iGaming operators allegedly advertising and trying to acquire customers in other provinces. One of the five judges hearing the Ontario iGaming reference saw things at least somewhat how the lotteries did, and dissented.
As Justice Katherine van Rensburg saw it, Ontario's proposed model "anticipates" a way of gambling that would fall outside of what's permitted by the Criminal Code. Ontario, she wrote, would be "conducting and managing" games outside its territorial limits.
"Whether the Proposed Model is conceived of as one lottery scheme or two (or more), Ontario’s actions in relation to the proposed agreements, the anticipated games and the overall lottery framework, would take it outside the protection provided in s. 207(1)(a) [of the Criminal Code] because they would not occur entirely 'in that province,'" van Rensburg wrote, adding later that "In my view, regardless of whether, for the purpose of this reference, the Proposed Model is conceived of as one lottery scheme or as two (or more) lottery schemes, with the lottery scheme conducted and managed in Ontario linking with an international scheme (or schemes), Ontario would be taking actions in relation to the international elements of the Proposed Model that would not fall within the exemption for provincially-operated lottery schemes provided for in s. 207(1)(a) and would contravene provisions of the Criminal Code."
This is a breaking news story and will be updated.
