Overview
This is the first article in a series examining Canada’s changing gambling landscape and its impacts on Canadians.
At age 16, Aaron Abbott placed his first bet at a “bookies,” a brick-and-mortar betting store in his hometown of Coventry, U.K.
Abbott deposited the dinner money his mother had given him into a roulette machine.
“I put five pounds in … I remember being in a shit mood,” recalled Abbott. Within minutes, the money was gone, leaving Abbott unimpressed.
But a conversation between two older men in the shop caught his attention: they were discussing bets they had placed on an upcoming game including Aston Villa — the elite soccer team Abbott had supported since he was a child.
“I don’t know anything about roulette, but I do know about football,” he recalled thinking.
Within weeks, Abbott had started placing bets of his own on soccer. Within months, a casual betting habit had morphed into a full-blown gambling problem.
From the age of 16 to 29, Abbott lost around £263,000, including money he stole from family and friends. He committed self-harm and even contemplated suicide.
Abbott’s path is one many Canadians may now be on as sports gambling takes off in some parts of Canada.
“Just because something’s normal, it doesn’t mean it’s safe,” said Abbott, who is today 35 and founder of Against The Odds, a U.K.-based charity that aims to improve public awareness around sports gambling addiction.
Across the pond
The United Kingdom is about 20 years ahead of Canada in terms of allowing digital sports betting.
In 2005, the country passed the Gambling Act, a law that loosened restrictions on gambling just as digital commerce was becoming more popular.
Around that time, a U.K. betting company called bet365 began consolidating market share. Bet365 enabled users around the world to place live, online bets during sports games, a practice known as in-game betting.
Darragh McGee, author of the book Imitation Games: How Gambling Hijacked Sports, says an unending supply of sports games gives people endless opportunities to bet.
“I can go from a full day of soccer here in the U.K., of like 72 teams across [three] divisions, to the Spanish leagues, then the Italian leagues. I’ll then bet on the [North American Major League Soccer] in the evening if I want to,” said McGee.
“[A] single sporting event no longer matters in the same way because they’re all just betting opportunities.”
In-game betting also opened up what gamblers could bet on, expanding the possibilities from game outcomes to so-called “prop bets” — short, in-game bets on events such as the number of penalties, total goals or total assists.
Abbott remembers well the novel and addictive features of in-game betting, which came on the scene just as he was beginning to gamble in the mid-2000s.
“You feel like a bit of a guinea pig, because you’re testing the waters for the industry.”
Technological changes further expanded the possibilities. With smartphones and laptops, bettors could soon access sports betting anytime, anywhere.
McGee says betting apps have followed social media companies’ playbook, adopting addictive features such as alerts and push notifications.
“The gambling industry … added all the addictive alchemy of a Las Vegas casino onto big tech,” said McGee.
This is in contrast to more traditional gambling settings, says Bruce Kidd, professor emeritus at the University of Toronto and a former Olympic athlete.
“In the old days, when you bet on a horse race, you physically went out to the track and you bet on eight races during a long afternoon,” he said.
“Now, you can … bet 300 times on a game.”
Ads everywhere
For most of Canada’s history, gambling was mostly prohibited. Horse racing is one exception: racetracks have been part of Canadian communities since before Confederation, and betting at the track has been permitted since 1892.
In 1969, Parliament allowed government-run lotteries, and the provinces later expanded into casinos and online gaming. Sports bettors were only allowed to wager on multiple games — known as parlays — through their provincial lottery corporation.
But in 2021, Ottawa introduced a major change with the Safe and Regulated Sports Betting Act, a law that legalized single-event sports betting and enabled the provinces to open and regulate their own sports-betting markets.
Ontario was the first to act in 2022, and Alberta followed suit this July. In Ontario, the province launched iGaming Ontario, an agency tasked with creating a competitive online gaming market.
Ontario’s move sparked a flood of new entrants. Some are Canadian companies, such as NorthStar Bets and Bet 99. Others are foreign behemoths, such as the U.K.’s bet365 or the American Draft Kings and Bet MGM.
In their rush to gain customers, some operators have run aggressive marketing campaigns on television, radio, digital platforms and even players’ uniforms.
This has effectively shaped the national landscape, as Ontario-licensed operators may air ads coast-to-coast. Digital ads can also often be seen by viewers in other provinces.
‘Truly dynamic’
In Canada, as in the United Kingdom, one of Parliament’s goals was to limit criminal sports gambling.
Before legalization, illegal single-event sport betting was flourishing in “a black market that evaded taxes and directed funds to organized crime,” Chris Bittle, a Liberal MP who supported the Safe and Regulated Sports Betting Act, said in an Aug. 12, 2021 news release.
Legalization also creates jobs, boosts local tourism and generates revenue for the province, supporters of the act say.
Ontario has seen tax revenue from iGaming rise from $87 million in 2022-2023 to $219 million in 2024-25. The agency keeps about 20 per cent of operators’ revenue. Alberta uses a similar model.
“iGaming Ontario’s third year of operation has exceeded growth expectations and shows Ontario is home to a truly dynamic igaming market,” the Crown corporation’s 2024-2025 annual report said.
That year, Ontarians placed more than $82 billion in wagers, according to iGaming Ontario.
The Ontario Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Gaming did not reply to Canadian Affairs’ requests for comment.
‘In your face’
Deregulation has had costs, too.
McGee says gambling legalization has had the same devastating effect in Canada as it has had in the United Kingdom.
“What you’re witnessing [in Canada] is not a novel experience,” said McGee, who is based at the University of Bath in England, but completed his PhD at the University of Toronto while playing on its varsity soccer team.
Kidd remembers thinking little of the Safe and Regulated Sports Betting Act when it first passed. But he was soon troubled by how pervasive gambling ads had become.
“The thing that really triggered me was sitting at home, watching sports on TV and the ads [being] so in your face,” he said.
A 2024 joint analysis by the CBC and University of Bristol found that gambling messages accounted for more than 20 per cent of broadcast time during five NHL and two NBA games aired in Ontario in October 2023.
A separate University of Bristol analysis found a single Premier League soccer match between Wolverhampton Wanderers and Manchester City aired over 5,200 gambling messages.
The explosion of gambling ads and activity correlates with a dramatic rise in problematic gambling behaviours.
Today, around 1.3 million Brits — nearly two per cent of the population — are believed to have a gambling problem, according to the country’s gambling commission.
In Ontario, where single-event sports betting has been legal for fewer than five years, the impacts are also starting to be seen.
Ontario’s provincial mental health and addiction helpline, Connex Ontario, has seen the number of gambling-related calls nearly triple in three years, rising to nearly 30,000 contacts in 2025.
A September study by the American Journal of Preventive Medicine showed emergency room visits for gambling-related harm in Ontario have nearly doubled since 2022. Young men were the most affected group.
And a 2024 poll from Mental Health Research Canada found that 22 per cent of people showing high-risk gambling behaviours have planned a suicide attempt, compared to only two per cent of the general population.
Despite the potential for harm, Abbott, in Coventry, still believes sports betting should be legal. But he does think the industry should be better regulated — similar to how tobacco products are now regulated.
In both the United Kingdom and Canada, it is almost entirely illegal to advertise tobacco to consumers. Tobacco is also required to be sold in plain packaging that includes strong health warnings.
“If we carry on the way we’re going, things aren’t going to change. You have to start safeguarding [people] at some point,” said Abbott.
