Canada’s Booming Gambling Industry

When one thinks about the fastest-growing industries across Canada, the usual suspects come to mind — cannabis, eCommerce, and mining. However, straddling not far behind those is gambling.

Country-wide, monthly handles for the entire gambling industry hover in the high $1 billion to low $2 billion CAD range, per Statistics Canada. That uptrend is largely expected to continue as Internet-based technology makes the practice more and more accessible to Canadians and Carribean-Canadians, alike.

Helping matters is Canada’s open-minded outlook on gambling, which is a far contrast to its neighbors to the south. Whereas the United States barely lifted the federal ban on sports betting in 2018, it’s long been legal in Canada, so long as it’s regulated by the local government.

Each of the 10 Canadian provinces has free reign in how they regulate betting. Take Ontario, for example. The most-populous province of Canada has more than 25 legal casinos within its borders — offering the full gamut of betting such as casino, sports, and horse-track wagering.

But akin to many other industries in the COVID era, the gambling industry is fast-tracking its shift toward digital over physical properties. And where do Canada laws stand on online wagering, you ask?

All licenses owned.

The simple answer is there are no laws that prevent it outright. The more nuanced-answer is it too has to be licensed by the government, just like normal casinos are.

But we’ll let you in on a little secret: there’s a laundry-list of offshore betting sites that have skirted around these very rules. Online-only bookmakers such as BetUS or BetOnline have become increasingly popular among Canadian bettors, but none have an official license from Canada’s government.

Betting sites such as those operate out of foreign countries with even less betting regulations  than Canada’s own. Think of countries like Costa Rica and even Carribean-based ones such as Jamaica.

Given the sheer popularity of offshore betting, the official statistics on Canada’s betting industry only account for half the story. Get this, gambling makes up the largest segment of Canada’s entertainment industry at over $16 billion in annual revenues, per the Canadian Gaming Association.

Of course, the economic impact of gambling can’t be measured in revenues alone. Thanks to government oversight and regulation, close to $10 billion tax dollars are generated by the industry. That chunk of change, which is no small amount, gets pumped back into the country in the form of government and community programs.

The biggest beneficiaries? Canadian citizens and residents, of course. Outside of tax incentives, the gambling industry also employs just under 200,000 full-time employees to serve food and cocktails, deal cards, run the gambling corporations, and everything else in between.

You have to believe that gambling also has a “halo effect” on supporting industries — namely accommodations, restaurants, retail, among others. With Canadians traveling city to city to get their gambling fix, these aforementioned industries get a boost of their own in the process.

Now just imagine if the offshore, non-licensed gambling numbers were accounted for in the above stats? It wouldn’t be far-fetched to believe Canada’s gambling sector would add an extra $3 to $5 billion CAD in revenues — and honestly, that’s being conservative. Really conservative, as a matter of fact.

Along with technological advancements such as virtual reality and 5G mobile Internet, the growth of Canada’s gambling sector hinges on the government’s ability to corral non-licensed betting. Not that the country hasn’t tried in the past.

In 2013, illegal bookmaking operation “Platinum Sports Book” was forced to close its doors after a lengthy investigation and court procedure. Worse, its ring leader was sentenced to two years in prison and levied with a $3 million fine.

While that bookmaker was caught red-handed, shutting down the hundreds to thousands of offshore betting sites that exist today won’t be nearly as easy. New ones pop up regularly and truth be speaking, the Canadian government has bigger fish to fry than betting sports online — a national pandemic being one of many.

Whether regulated or not, there’s no question betting has a permanent place in Canadian culture and economy, alike. That presence should see an expansion in the coming years.