Ontario Sets Another Gaming Revenue Record as AGCO Steps Up Enforcement

Ontario continues to set record gaming revenue in the Great White North, in a month that both opened and closed with bitter cold in the province. Year over Year, January was up 22%  to a non adjusted gross of CA $402 million. Handle, or total amount wagered also surged with more than CA $9.5 billion wagered.

Total handle was actually CA $9.52 billion slightly edging the CA $9.5 billion prior record set just last month, and showing that even after four long years of growth the market still has room to move higher.

Average loss per player for the month was up only slightly to CA $303 from CA $297, which meant the bulk of the growth came from the 220,000 more players that were active this year vs last. There are more than 80 websites for all those players to choose from, and almost 50 separate operators make up Ontario’s unrestricted, and highly competitive marketplace.

Unlike maturing iGaming markets in the states, Ontario’s total sports book share of this market is a relatively tiny 12% or about CA $1.2 billion in monthly wagers. Poker is an even tinier sliver of this total at around a 1% market share.

Stepped UP Oversight

The Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario has had its hands full so far this year with fines for operators failing to act to appropriately protect betting integrity. In early January they fined FanDuel Canada CA $350,000 for failing to identify suspicious betting patterns around a Czech Table Tennis tournament in late 2024 that had numerous red flags around more than 140 suspicious bets originating from three Ontario player accounts. This despite previous warnings about match fixing from those involved in this particular tournament.

Then in early February the Commission took the highly unusual step of suspending PointsBet Canada’s license for five days over their “systemic failure” in detecting the suspicious betting patterns around NBA Star Jontay Porter’s bet rigging schemes.

These allegations also began in early 2024 when the Gaming Commission pointedly asked PointsBet if they had offered any bets on the Toronto Raptor’s Porter and they said they hadn’t.

But in late 2025, after a much larger bet rigging scandal came to light, uncovered by the initial Porter investigation, Pointsbet backtracked, saying that they had, in fact, taken bets on Porter in the games at question.

AGCO, believing that not detecting the bets at the time was a lack of diligence, but waiting nearly 18 months to come forward with a revision was a serious threat to the integrity of the sports betting market in Ontario, chose for the first time to temporarily suspend an operator’s license.

Alberta Time Line Moves Forward

There has also been movement in Canada’s other iGaming market, Alberta. Super Group, which owns Spin and Betway casino brands stated in their earnings call last week that they believed the new online casino framework in the province which will closely follow Ontario’s legal regulations will launch sooner than expected, perhaps by the second quarter of this year.

Most analysts had believed it would be the second half of the year before Alberta was ready to kick open the doors, but they have accepted the first few licensees into what is termed the Alberta Registration Portal.

Once accepted into this scheme operators can begin to advertise, register new players and even offer some prelaunch promotions but now wagering is yet allowed. Ironically, PointsBet was one of the first licensees to be accepted, with BetRivers and Betway also beginning to sign up players.

What Lies Ahead

Four years into a new regulated era of private casinos the Ontario iGaming market is still expanding not plateauing.  Growth is being driven by new players not increasing spend, which is sign of a healthy still growing market, while regulators increasingly act aggressively with operators who can’t stay with guidelines, indicating increasing confidence in their role of protecting that market.

Now, Alberta prepares to launch its own private market with Ontario as its benchmark both as for what’s possible and the dangers of relying on operators to self-police.