Ontario considers permitting online gamblers to play with international participants.
The case, set to be heard in a Toronto courtroom this fall, was initiated by an order-in-council issued by Ford’s cabinet earlier this year.
This cabinet order asks the Ontario Court of Appeal to address the following question: “Would legal online gaming and sports betting remain lawful under the Criminal Code if users were permitted to participate in games and betting with individuals outside of Canada?”
According to industry experts, hundreds of millions of dollars in potential wagers on online poker and daily sports fantasy betting sites are at stake. Currently, these sites cannot legally allow Ontarians to join global pools of players.
Online gaming companies argue that many Ontario poker players are bypassing provincially regulated sites in favor of international platforms offering higher stakes games. They claim that a favorable ruling permitting Ontario players to interact with non-Canadians would draw these gamblers into the regulated system, boosting provincial revenue.
The case has garnered national attention, with lottery and gaming agencies from nearly every other province urging the court to rule against the international player expansion Ontario is seeking.
In Canada, governments have the right to request a pre-emptive legal opinion from the court, known as a reference, although this power is rarely used. Ontario’s last significant reference case was in 2019 when the province sought a ruling on the constitutionality of the federal carbon tax, a case it ultimately lost.
The province collected an estimated $790 million from online gambling in the 2023-24 fiscal year, taking 20 percent of the revenues from regulated gambling sites, which is calculated as wagers minus payouts.
Ontario’s attorney general has submitted over 700 pages of documents to the Court of Appeal to determine whether its online gaming system would remain legal under the Criminal Code if the pool of Ontario-based participants were expanded to include offshore players.
Currently, Ontario gamblers are restricted to playing online poker among themselves, resulting in peer-to-peer poker sites attracting only a small fraction of the wagers compared to Ontario’s online casino and sports betting sites.
According to iGaming Ontario, $51.7 billion was wagered on provincially regulated online casino sites and $9.7 billion on sports betting during the 2023-24 fiscal year, while peer-to-peer poker saw just $1.6 billion in wagers.
A spokesperson for iGaming Ontario noted that pay-for-play daily fantasy sports products are not currently offered by any registered operators and that peer-to-peer poker accounts for only two to three percent of wagers on the province’s regulated sites.
