Ontario’s April iGaming Revenue Sets Stage for Alberta’s Looming Launch

Another sign of spring in the Great White North as April shows a thawing iGaming market in Ontario. Driven heavily by the popularity of online casinos in Ontario, year-over-year revenue growth continued unabated at nearly 30%, and average revenue per active account hit a high of CAD $321 per month.

Since this April marks the four-year anniversary of the relaunch of iGaming in the province, we will take this month’s numbers as an opportunity to look back over the intervening years, see what’s been working, what needs a fix, and what it all means for the upcoming Alberta relaunch in six weeks' time.

Where We’ve Come: The Grey Market Challenge

Four years ago, Ontario had a problem. A vast majority, some estimate more than 70%, of iGaming was taking place on unregulated, grey-market sites. While the province did offer a legal solution through a state-operated website called PlayOLG, most people found its odds non-competitive, its game offerings slim, and marketing and reinvestment virtually non-existent.

The market needed wide-open, competitive operators - regulated and taxed, yes, but able to innovate and profit from their own decisions and choices. In 2021, when the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO) and the newly formed iGaming Ontario (iGO) began searching for solutions, the American iGaming market was still in its infancy.

Ontario was the only Canadian province at the time thinking of rewriting the rules in a way that might make regulation, not prohibition, do all the hard work. People were going to play; the state could either choose to regulate and tax, continue to offer a subpar product, or simply tell people they shouldn’t play at all. In the end, they chose the wisdom of a tightly regulated but open free market with no limit on the number of licensees.

The Strategy: Taming the Wolves

The original concern wasn't about having too many licensees, but finding any interest at all. That was perhaps Ontario’s biggest trick: getting those grey-market wolves to become well-behaved guard dogs.

Instead of telling those dozens of operators they would be barred from the new market, Ontario not only invited them in but gave them more than a year to transition, from roughly September 2021 to October 2022, before requiring that all operations be moved into the new regulated market. They kept license fees low and tax rates at a reasonable level.

By the end of that first year, Ontario had more than four dozen operators and over 70 separate iGaming skins licensed and running, 70% of which had been grey-market operators paying no tax and no licensing fees just a year earlier. Now, four years later, more than 90% of online gamblers play within that regulated framework.

The Results: Unprecedented Growth

If the goal was to grow the market while luring players back from unregulated operators, they have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams:

• 2022–2023 (First Full Year): The regulated gaming market saw more than CAD $35 billion in wagers and about $1.2 billion in revenue.

• Today: The market sees nearly $100 billion a year in wagers and more than $4 billion in revenue.

• April 2026 Snapshot: iGaming and online sports betting revenue reached more than CAD $400 million in just one month.

More than 1.25 million of the 15 million people in Ontario have an active account monthly, and since launch, the province has pulled in over $2 billion in cumulative tax revenue.

Where We Are Headed: The Alberta Relaunch

As impressive as Ontario’s success has been, the province’s contributions to Canadian gaming may not just come from dollars. In just a few weeks, Alberta will launch its competitive, regulated market, leaning heavily on the Ontario model to do the initial heavy lifting.

This market will open on July 13th with approximately 50 operators who believe they can replicate the success of their eastern neighbors by keeping license fees low, minimizing tax rates, and allowing the best Alberta online casinos to compete to keep customers happy.

The question now isn't whether Alberta can replicate Ontario's success, but how quickly it might do so. Alberta benefits from four years of lessons learned, a mature operator ecosystem, and a player base already accustomed to online gambling. Unlike Ontario, which gave grey-market operators more than a year to transition into the regulated framework, Alberta has required operators to make that choice before launch.

Ultimately, this strict deadline may accelerate moving players away from grey-market operators by giving consumers a clearer distinction between regulated and unregulated options from day one.