It was more than 160 years ago that Queen Victoria handed the Toronto Turf Club a historic opportunity on a literal platter: the annual prize of a fifty-guinea “plate” for the winner of what would become Canada’s biggest horse race.
Today, the turf club’s spiritual successor, Woodbine Entertainment Group, is trying to serve up another opportunity as it prepares for the 166th running of what is now the King’s Plate, which will take place this Saturday in Toronto.
That opportunity is a “plug-and-play” platform for pari-mutuel wagering on horse racing, built by Toronto-based Woodbine for use by online sportsbooks in Ontario.
It’s intended to be a simple solution to bridge what is a complex legal and regulatory gap between horse racing and sports betting in Canada. And, as of this week, Woodbine officially has two of the biggest online sports betting operators on board with its product.
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Woodbine Entertainment has launched a plug-and-play pari-mutuel wagering platform that allows Ontario’s licensed online sportsbooks to legally offer horse racing bets.
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Two major operators—bet365 and OLG—have already integrated the platform, giving horse racing exposure to broader, younger sports betting audiences.
- Woodbine remains the only federally licensed provider of pari-mutuel betting on horse racing in Ontario.
The first was bet365, which signed on in 2023. The second, announced on Tuesday, is the government-owned Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp. (OLG), giving Woodbine two influential allies in trying to get the sport of kings in front of more bettors.
“Being able to integrate with sports betting operators … what it does is gives us an expanded reach and brings a lot of new, younger, casual fans,” said David Vivenes, executive vice president, revenue, brand and experience for Woodbine, in an interview with Covers.
“To be in that environment, and for them to pay some attention and bring racing into the repertoire of things that they are interested in, is a great opportunity,” Vivenes added.
Some Ontario sports betting news: OLG has partnered with Woodbine Entertainment Group to offer online wagering on horse racing via the government-owned lottery’s iGaming site and online sportsbook, PROLINE+. Just in time for the 166th King’s Plate on Saturday in Toronto. pic.twitter.com/blKEfBCoji
— Geoff Zochodne (@GeoffZochodne) August 12, 2025
Woodbine, Canada’s biggest horse racing operator, runs like a not-for-profit group that is supposed to pump profits back into the horse racing industry. But a vibrant horse racing industry needs bettors, and in North America, the competition for wagering dollars is fierce.
Perhaps it is no fiercer than in Ontario, which has more than 30 authorized sites offering online sports betting to residents. Those include bet365 and OLG’s PROLINE+, but also BetMGM, DraftKings, and FanDuel, among others.
Meanwhile, sitting outside Ontario’s regulated iGaming market, is Woodbine. The company offers betting on horse racing at its tracks in Toronto and Milton, Ont., as well as at off-track betting locations and through its online racebook, HPIbet.
While these are all likely familiar to experienced horseplayers in Ontario, they may not be as well-known by the younger, SGP-loving bettors who populate the platforms of newer online sportsbooks.
Tiz the law, I'm afraid
These Ontario sports betting sites can’t offer horse racing on their own either. Only pari-mutuel wagering is legal in Canada and Woodbine is the only entity in the province with a federal pari-mutuel license. Fixed-odds horse racing could have been part of the legislation that legalized single-game sports betting in Canada in 2021, but, at the request of the industry, the bill was amended to remove any ambiguity and keep the status quo intact.
This created some chaos in Ontario in April 2022, when the province’s new regulated market for iGaming went live. While multiple private-sector operators were authorized by the province to take bets, some of those operators were previously live in the province and booking action on horse racing. When they joined Ontario’s regulated market, that horse racing had to go.
There are, however, some sports betting operators that continue to refuse regulation in Ontario and yet continue to take bets from provincial residents. One of them, Bodog, has been targeted by Ontario regulators and by Canadian lotteries, including with legal action in Manitoba.
Woodbine has an interest in and is supportive of the ongoing efforts to stamp out unregulated activity in Ontario. The company is already facing competition for wagering dollars from regulated sports betting operators; unregulated operators offering fixed-odds on racing ratchets up that competition.
Looks like a Manitoba court has granted the local lottery and gaming corporation an injunction against offshore sportsbook Bodog. Potentially precedent-setting development in Canada, which has a large "grey market" for online gambling: pic.twitter.com/052Js8ZBzf
— Geoff Zochodne (@GeoffZochodne) May 27, 2025
Woodbine is also keeping an eye on the fixed-odds experiments and efforts happening in the U.S. and abroad, as that type of wagering could be effective in attracting interest from more casual bettors. One of the features of pari-mutuel wagering is that the odds you bet a horse at may not necessarily be the odds you get if that horse wins, as they shift in relation to the wagering on the race. Fixed odds are, well, fixed. You get what you bet.
However, Vivenes said “there’s a lot to like” still about pari-mutuel wagering, and, at any rate, there’s no sign the federal government is about to suddenly legalize fixed-odds betting on horse racing in Canada anytime soon.
In the meantime, Woodbine and others would like to see the campaigns against offshore sportsbooks continue.
“We are supportive of anything that suppresses illegal activity and enhances and helps the industry flourish in a legal way,” Vivenes said.
No nay never satisfied
In short, then, nobody can legally offer betting on horse racing in Ontario without the help of Woodbine.
Yet Woodbine still wants to help sportsbooks help themselves (and Woodbine), by offering them the new platform for pari-mutuel wagering. That platform can be plugged into the back-end of a sports betting site, so users can still log on and wager in a familiar setting, yet have the wagering ultimately flow through Woodbine's licensed systems.
The first two takers of that horse racing product, bet365 and OLG, have a different look to them. bet365 maintains much of its signature look and feel, while the OLG site much more closely resembles HPIbet. But the fact remains: they offer a way to bet on horse racing.
This is the opportunity Woodbine wants to hand to other operators in Ontario, in addition to bet365 and OLG.
“We believe any sportsbook and any sports betting operator would want to have a full offering of all the key betting sports, and racing is there,” Vivenes said. “So we want to work with other partners and other operators in integrating racing into their platforms.”
Vivenes, who oversees wagering operations for Woodbine, said there are always conversations happening with potential partners. However, he declined to name any other names during the interview with Covers.
"We want to expand our reach," Vivenes said. "We want to reach as many customers in Ontario as we possibly can."
Some Ontario-licensed operators have their own horse racing platforms that they offer elsewhere, such as FanDuel with FanDuel Racing and DraftKings with DK Horse. In Ontario, though, those brands must have Woodbine behind them to book bets.
“My job is never to be satisfied with where the business is at,” Vivenes said. “It is to continue to look for opportunities to grow and that’s what we’re focused on. We’ve had some wins and we’ve had some challenges.”
One of the biggest challenges that has loomed over horse racing is that wagering has skidded amid the growth of legalized sports betting. Pari-mutuel handle has declined in recent years, while sports wagering handle continues to rise.
Woodbine has also tried its hand at going solo in trying to woo a younger clientele with its Dark Horse Bets app. The app was billed in 2021 as "the easiest horse betting mobile application for new fans looking to experience the rush of horse racing."
However, Dark Horse Bets is being shut down later this month, according to its website. This is to "consolidate and streamline the wagering experience under HPIbet – Canada’s premier horse racing platform," an FAQ explains.
If you want to know what former NFL QB Jake Delhomme is up to, the answer is winning horse races and testifying (successfully!) in support of fixed-odds wagering in Louisiana:
— Geoff Zochodne (@GeoffZochodne) May 27, 2025
With Sports Betting in Mind, Fixed-Odds Horse Racing Gains Momentumhttps://t.co/OybJK3qcm6 @Covers
Finding and keeping bettors is crucial for horse racing. Wagering means revenue, and revenue means money for breeders, jockeys, track operators, trainers, and owners.
A rising tide of wagering could also lift a lot of boats in the horse racing industry. This would include bettors enjoying deeper pari-mutuel wagering pools, to tracks investing more in the experience of watching races, to the owners who buy horses and the trainers who train them in the hopes of winning purse money.
"The more we can grow wagering, the more purses can grow that bring more participants into the sport," Vivenes said.
Now, does Woodbine believe that somebody who loves the NFL, or online slots, or lottery tickets, is suddenly about to abandon those loves entirely for horse racing? Not necessarily, but a sports bettor who sprinkles some horse racing into their wagering repertoire would be a win.
A bet on this Saturday’s King’s Plate wouldn’t be unwelcome either, especially after torrential downpours forced its rescheduling to a Friday last year.
“The long term of the sport is only going to be possible if people who are in their 30s or 40s will be big fans 20, 30 years from now,” Vivenes said. “We need to be working on all those time horizons, contemporizing the sport, making it accessible, to bring more people into it.”
