Patrons sit for lunch as Blue Jays baseball plays on the TV in downtown Toronto bar in October, 2025. Since 2022, Ontarians have wagered billions of dollars in private-market sports bets.Cole Burston/The Canadian Press
In 2012, which was roughly a century ago in terms of how North America treats online sports betting, Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig issued a stark warning:
Gambling is “the deadliest of all things that can happen” to a sport, he said. “It’s evil. It creates doubt and destroys your sport.”
Mr. Selig was half right. It does create enormous doubt: every curiously fumbled ball, questionable call, or seemingly exaggerated injury. When anything can be a bet, and millions of dollars are on the line each game, corruption is inevitable. And fans will be left to wonder whether the plays they’re seeing are genuine, or in service to some enormously lucrative wager.
But Mr. Selig’s warning was too narrow. Yes, the unchecked proliferation of online gambling can destroy a sport, but it can also start to destroy a generation of sports fans, by feasting off their love of the game, then their livelihoods, and in some cases, their lives.
Canada’s federal government opened the door to single event sports betting in 2021, which allowed provinces to develop their own frameworks for private-market gambling. Ontario became the only province to do so in 2022, until Alberta also opened its online gambling market to private companies in July, 2026.
Five years later: Canada’s legalization of single-event sports gambling in five charts
Ontarians have wagered more than $40-billion in private-market sports bets since then – and hundreds of billions when online casino bets are included – which have generated billions of dollars of revenue for the province (Ontario collects a 20-per-cent tax on gaming revenues from private operators). But there have been costs, too. A recent report published in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine found a dramatic increase in gambling-related emergency room visits following the legalization and liberalization of online sports betting and single-event betting. Over a 14-year-period, researchers noted that visits were up 154 per cent among males aged 10 to 29, and 116 per cent higher among males aged 30 to 44, though there was no change for females.
The incidence numbers are not overwhelming – the report noted 952 total emergency-room visits over the 14 years – but that number does not represent the likely thousands more whose lives have been disrupted or destroyed by online gambling, but who haven’t reached the point of emergency-room crisis.
Gambling addiction, and specifically sports gambling, is so insidious because: 1) the temptation is everywhere for sports fans; and 2) its malignancy is so rarely acknowledged. It is impossible to get through a live sports event without being inundated with ads, logos and discussions about betting, which means that someone struggling with addiction or who is susceptible to being sucked in (including children and teens) cannot watch sports in Ontario without being constantly exposed. And sports wagering is not portrayed as a vice in these ads, for obvious reasons. Indeed, it is deliberately framed as “gaming,” not “gambling,” and it is endorsed by celebrities and athletes including Sydney Sweeney, LeBron James and Wayne Gretzky.
Opinion: When it comes to legalized gambling, Canada’s youth are being dealt a losing hand
Canada allowed private sports betting in 2021 and then walked away, wishing the families of the country good luck with their men and boys. Only now are we beginning to recognize the need for some guardrails, which will be explored when and if Bill S-211, the National Framework on Sports Betting Advertising Act, is passed (it is scheduled to go to committee in the fall). But the legislation only goes as far as requiring the Heritage Minister to establish a framework for sports betting advertising, with a timeline that spans several years. That is too vague, and too slow.
In 2019, Britain’s biggest gambling companies agreed to a voluntary whistle-to-whistle ban, whereby gambling ads were not shown from five minutes before a live game to five minutes after, and never earlier than 9 p.m. It’s not a perfect solution, obviously, but it cut down on gambling advertisement exposure for viewers, and particularly for younger fans who are less likely to watch later games. Belgium has gone further, banning gambling ads on TV, radio and online, and prohibiting banners and logos in stadiums (with some exceptions for logos on jerseys). And Australia, which has the highest per capita gambling losses in the world, recently passed new legislation levying similar restrictions on sports betting advertisements to better protect those vulnerable to gambling harms.
We should do the same here in Canada. We have a habit in this country of legalizing certain substances, procedures, or services, but without ensuring proper guardrails are in place or necessary data is collected to monitor harms. Indeed, instead of opening the door a crack, we knock down a wall. (And then we act surprised by the mess, and try to slap putty on the studs.) Canada doesn’t need to spend years developing a framework to deal with a problem that is sucking in men and boys every day. We just need to decide we need to do something, and then do it.
Editor’s note: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that the federal government legalized single event sports betting in 2021. Federal legislation opened the door to single event sports betting at that time. The article incorrectly stated that Ontarians have wagered hundreds of billions of dollars in private-market bets since 2022; Ontarians have made more than $40-billion in private-market sports bets since then, and hundreds of billions when online casino bets are included. The photo caption was also updated.