As sports fans tune in to watch the start of the NHL season or the Blue Jays in the playoffs, it will be impossible to miss the sports gambling ads that pepper every broadcast.
These ads have some Canadians worried.
“I believe betting poisons sports … it reduces sports to … outcomes entirely related to money,” said Bruce Kidd, a former Olympian and co-founder of the Campaign to Ban Ads for Gambling, an advocacy nonprofit.
“It breaks my heart that sports organizations are hurting for revenue,” said Kidd, who is also professor emeritus of sport and public policy at the University of Toronto. “But you shouldn’t stay alive financially by addicting the next generation to a very harmful practice.”
Some politicians take a similar view.
This May, Senator Marty Deacon reintroduced a bill to regulate gambling advertising. In Deacon’s view, Ottawa has a responsibility to remedy a mess of its own making.
“We created legislation in 2021 to legalize single sport betting … and now we have an obligation to fix it,” she said.
Industry shift
In 2021, Parliament legalized single-event sports betting and enabled provinces to “control and manage” sports gambling in their own jurisdictions.
Ontario was the first — and so far only — province to act. By early 2022, it had launched iGaming Ontario, an agency tasked with creating a competitive online gaming market in which private gaming operators could operate.
The move sparked a flood of new entrants, from international gaming giants like DraftKings and BetMGM to smaller, niche operators like Betty and Bet99.
In their rush to gain customers, some operators have run aggressive marketing campaigns on television, radio, digital platforms and even players’ uniforms.
While the other provinces still prohibit private gaming operators, Ontario’s rules have effectively shaped the national landscape. Ontario-licensed operators’ ads air coast-to-coast and their digital ads can often be seen by viewers in other provinces.
Public health pushback
Public health experts have been sounding the alarm over the effect of the changed ad landscape.
“Gambling online has gone from being something that we were afraid of and discouraged and illegal to being encouraged, rather quickly,” said Nigel Turner, a researcher at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Canada’s largest addiction research centre.
Ontarians wagered over $35 billion on legal online gambling sites in the year after iGaming Ontario launched. This sum far exceeds what was wagered by the approximately 1.5 per cent of Ontarians who bet on the illegal market in 2018, a recent report says, suggesting legalization drove a substantial increase in betting.
Young men are considered especially susceptible to engaging in sports betting.
“These … are the people who watch sports games …. males in general, and young males in particular, are the ones who are more likely to get into sports gambling than other demographics,” said Turner.
Kidd worries many of these young gamblers are minors.
“We need concrete data, but I have no doubt that large numbers of children — and youth, well below the age of 18, which is the legal age — are engaged in betting,” he said.
Betting is associated with various gambling-related harms, including financial, relationship and emotional distress, health problems and criminal involvement, research shows.
Research by Turner found the number of people who called Ontario’s problem gambling hotline increased significantly following the expansion of Ontario’s online gambling market.
But this is not the only harm, Kidd says. Gambling ads corrupt the nature of sport, he says, transforming hockey rinks and football fields into virtual casinos.
“[Betting] takes sport out of the physical dimension,” he said. “It takes sport out of the cultural dimension.”
Many Canadians have not appreciated the change either.
A 2024 survey found strong public appetite for tougher rules: 68 per cent of Canadians said they want athletes and celebrities banned from participating in gambling ads; 66 per cent said gambling ads should not air during live games; and nearly 60 per cent favoured gambling ads being banned altogether.
Policy outlook
Recently, Ontario’s regulator has started to act. In early 2024, the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario prohibited active and retired athletes from appearing in gambling ads. It also restricted celebrity and influencer endorsements that are likely to appeal to minors.
But public health advocates would like to see provincial and federal governments go further.
“[Ontario’s] restrictions are a crucial first step in the regulatory action needed to reverse the alarming trends in online gambling among youth in Ontario,” Camille Quenneville, CEO of the Canadian Mental Health Association, said in an online statement.
Kidd’s Campaign to Ban Ads for Gambling says Parliament never considered how legalizing sports betting would upend the advertising landscape.
“The impetus for bill [C-218] was simply to regulate online gambling. There was no debate on the possibility of extensive advertising or the harm gambling advertisements might cause,” a 2023 white paper by the campaign says.
In 2023, Senator Marty Deacon first introduced what is now Bill S-211, legislation that would establish a national framework for gambling advertising. The bill would limit ads during programming likely to be watched by minors, ban celebrity endorsements and create uniform national advertising standards.
Deacon stresses the aim is not a total ban on gambling ads.
“Could we have a … rule so that five minutes before a game starts until five minutes after there’s no advertising? Could we [limit ads until] after nine o’clock?” she said.
Deacon also says any advertising framework should be the product of broad consultations.
“We need a really balanced perspective on this … broadcasters, operators, health experts — they all have to be part of the process.”
Scott Moore, who was president of SportsNet from 2010 till 2018, says revenue from gambling advertising has become a “huge revenue stream” for Canada’s two big sports broadcasters, TSN and Sportsnet.
But he notes that legalization simply regulated what was already happening in the “black and gray market.”
“Sadly, I don’t think [legalization] has changed the habits of the hardcore sports bettors,” he said. “But these sports betting companies are clearly out to try and gain new users.”
Moore notes that other jurisdictions, such as Britain and Australia, have introduced regulations around how much sports betting can be advertised or when.
“I think that [that type of] regulation has been slow to follow the legalization of betting in Canada.”
But he expects this to change.
“If I were a betting man — [to us that phrase] ironically — I would not be surprised to see some regulation come in at some point,” he said.
Thank you for reporting on this issue. The sports betting ads are over-the-top, appear to be designed to appeal to young people and promote problematic gambling. Much like we regulate advertising on other addictive products like cigarettes, so should we regulate gambling ads.
It was a mistake to legislate gambling outside of casinos period. What does this do to advance the state of Canadians and their society. Now, the gambling organizations have reach directly into our homes through our cell phones. What a waste!
Don’t legislate to control advertising,,,, regulate to control gambling!