By Karina Rysberg Bay
June 26, 2025
BURLINGTON, ON
Hand-held devices allow a person to play from any location – this has driven the iGaming market.
Ontario’s government has launched a formal review into the province’s regulated online gambling and betting market, attempting to evaluate the sector’s performance and social impact since opening to private operators in April 2022. The announcement was made by Minister of Tourism, Culture and Sport Stan Cho during is opening talk at the 2025 Canadian Gaming Summit in Toronto.
The review is designed to increase efficiency, streamline regulatory practices, and support ongoing economic growth in the industry.
Ontario’s iGaming market is expected to generate more than $10 billion in revenue this year: $6.82 billion from the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation (OLG) and $3.7 billion from iGaming Ontario (iGO). “That Ontario’s gaming sector is booming would be a massive understatement,” Minister Cho said. “These historic figures, they represent a lot more than just the bottom line. They represent thousands of businesses, tens of thousands of jobs, millions paid forward to charity and billions back to the taxpayer.”
The market is growing in complexity and competitiveness, and players and casino operators are often looking for guidance on how to best engage with Ontario’s regulated landscape. For online poker enthusiasts, platforms like PokerStrategy are becoming highly valuable. This site offers Canadian players strategic insights into the local online poker scene, helping players improve their skills and navigate the country’s iGaming environment.
The market is growing in complexity and competitiveness, and players and casino operators are often looking for guidance on how to best engage with Ontario’s regulated landscape.
The provincial government’s upcoming review will address duplication in reporting requirements, regulatory uncertainty, and inefficiencies between iGO and the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO). iGO was previously a subsidiary of AGCO and has recently become a standalone agency in an attempt to create more flexibility in the fast-changing iGaming sector.
“The ultimate goal is to ensure the whole gaming sector delivers strong economic outputs for Ontarians,” Cho said. “And I want to be clear, this review and the changes made are not going to be a bunch of politicians sitting in a room thinking, what’s best for the industry. We are going to listen to the experts. We are going to listen to what affects you as the operators. We’re going to listen to the pros.”
This sentiment was repeated by Canadian Gaming Association CEO Paul Burns, who welcomed the review and stated the importance of reducing compliance burdens. “We’ve already started and have had those conversations among our members and industry to say we’ve seen the growing cost of compliance,” Burns said. “He continued that it is difficult in competitive markets since reporting is taking away from potential profits and government revenue share.
Cho highlighted that brick-and-mortar casinos are still an essential part of the local economy, even with digital platforms experiencing massive growth. He stated the need to include player protection measures, like self-exclusion systems, across online and physical casinos.
At the center of the review is the desire to give Ontario’s iGaming industry an “A” rating. The province is a leader in the sector and can balance casino revenue with responsible gambling practices.
Heidi Reinhart, Chair of iGO, believes that the agency’s new standalone status is an important step to effective industry governance. She continued that the agency will soon announce a new CEO after the retirement of Martha Otton.
The exact scope of the review must still be outlined, but public and private sector leaders seem satisfied with the review’s priorities to reduce regulatory challenges, avoid duplication, adapt to technological changes, and improve inter-agency collaboration.
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Gambling addiction ruins lives and families, and is responsible for an alarming and increasing number of suicides, especially by young males. Why is the Gazette constantly promoting it???
I have no idea if this is another gambling advertisement disguised as an article or what, but the concept of governments and the gaming industry promoting “responsible gaming practices” are dishonest and dangerous. As a recent Globe & Mail article states:
“”Responsible gambling” is thus more than an oxymoron – it’s part of the problem. It normalizes a highly risky endeavour and marshals a blame-the-victim approach, diverting the responsibility for the mental health and other problems associated with gambling to individuals and their families. The governments and corporations that legalized and profit from gambling take little or no responsibility for gambling harms.
We thus have a public health crisis being passed off as a problem of individual responsibility. What is needed instead, experts agree, is a comprehensive, holistic, public health approach, just as Canada eventually took with tobacco. The governments that created the problem have a responsibility to fix it.
Governments need to limit the inducements to gamble by banning the ads outright, in the same way that they previously banned ads for tobacco.“
STOP being part of the problem!