(MENAFN)

The Heartland Province made history on April 4, 2022 when it became the first Canadian province to regulate online gambling. That move allowed licensed operators to legally offer iGaming services to residents for the first time.

This shift opened the door to fans of blackjack, baccarat and roulette players to seek out a legitimate online casino Ontario experience, marking a huge turning point for the province’s gaming industry.

Three Years of Transformation

The transition to legal online gambling hasn’t been without its challenges, in fact there have been plenty of ups and downs. The results however, speak for themselves…

The Economic “Bump”

• Figures from the last financial year show gross gaming revenue from the online sector in Ontario growing by 32% on the previous year to a staggering CA$3.2 billion.
• The online gambling sector has created thousands of jobs in the province, not just directly but indirectly too through marketing, software and customer service.
• The legal revenues, which were once previously spent with overseas companies, are being properly taxed for the first time ever, with tax dollars going back into the public sector

What Took So Long?

It’s easy to look at the success of the online gambling industry in Ontario today and wonder why steps toward legalisation weren’t taken a long time ago. In fact, as early as ten years ago there was a rising movement of people supporting online legalisation, rightly pointing to the thriving, regulated online gambling sector in the United Kingdom.

The landscape in Canada was different to the British one of the mid-2000s though. Firstly, there was the long-standing commercial gambling deals with indigenous tribes to consider. The global economic picture post-2008 was at stark odds to the one in which Tony Blair’s British administration took the decision to legalise and regulate online gambling.

Money was tight, public services were cut and there was quite simply, not enough manpower or resources available to set up a wide-ranging and watertight regulatory body capable of overseeing online gambling in Canada.

The Covid Factor

The full effects of the Covid-19 pandemic won’t be fully known for decades. The impact that it had wasn’t just restricted to health, with its tentacles extending far beyond that and into a wide range of sectors.

Gambling was one of the sectors significantly impacted by the pandemic. During successive lockdowns, land-based casinos were repeatedly forced to close their doors and gamblers, who saw everyone else enjoying their hobbies online, were left to twiddle their thumbs.

It wasn’t just gamblers who were left frustrated at this. Land-based casinos, who had traditionally been opposed to the online sector were suddenly up in arms that they couldn’t seek revenues online like other Covid impacted business.

This meant that for the first time in decades, public support of online gambling and market forces rose to such levels that they couldn’t be ignored by lawmakers. Ontario took the move to online legalisation in April, 2020, but plans are already afoot for the rest of the country to follow suit in the coming months and years.

The Current Market Landscape

Three years is not a long enough time to really change consumer habits. It’s no surprise then, that one of the main areas of concern for domestic online gambling companies is the threat of overseas competitors – those based in Europe and the United States.

For two decades, British gambling companies have been free to offer their online services to tens of millions of UK residents. Whilst the online gambling in Canada and the US was illegal for much of that time, the people in those countries all had access to the internet, and many British companies were happy to turn a blind eye to the dollar signs that were accompanying online deposits.

When Ontario legalised online gambling in 2022, domestically based companies were not only on the backfoot in terms of establishing themselves, but they were also on the backfoot in terms of breaking nearly twenty years of brand loyalty between Canadian gamblers and British providers.

Online Gambling in Ontario: What Does the Next Three Years Hold?

Growth and lots of it. That’s the easy answer. As brand awareness continues to grow and companies put down roots, expect to see a huge rise in revenues and profits. Aside from the obvious, here are a couple more trends to keep an eye on in the coming years:

• Improved mobile offerings with faster and more immersive games
• AI integration for personalised, algorithmic playing experiences
• Wider use of live dealer streaming technology
• Greater tools for responsible gambling

Plus, as is the norm with online gambling, there will undoubtedly be some form of technological advancement that none of us are currently aware of, that changes the face of the industry.

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