The Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation (OLG) expects its online gambling operations to exceed $1 billion in revenue by April 2028.

The crown corporation’s Fiscal 2025-28 Business Plan outlines the expectations for the next few fiscal years. It has budgeted for its digital business, which includes casino, sports betting and lottery online products, to produce revenue of $819 million for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2025.

OLG forecasts its online gaming revenue will then grow to $895 million in FY 2025-26, $971 million FY 2026-27 and around $1.05 billion in FY 2027-28. That digital growth is projected to outpace the growth in OLG’s total gaming revenue across all sectors and channels.

All proceeds from OLG gambling go towards the provincial government. Those net proceeds are expected to be $48 million in FY 2024-25 and rise to $50 million in FY 2025-26, $52 million in FY 2026-27 and $54 million in FY 2027-28.

As noted by Dave Briggs of Gaming News Canada, unlike its iGaming Ontario-managed commercial rivals in the Ontario market, OLG also offers online lottery products. Removing iLottery to look at only online casino and digital sports betting in the projection numbers, OLG’s online revenue is about one-fifth of the total produced by all 49 other regulated operators.

“OLG’s digital business realized record levels of wagering in a hyper-competitive market and will continue to grow active players with new products and by enhancing the customer and responsible gaming experience,” the report said. “The investments we’ve made in OLG.ca and our PROLINE+ brand have established OLG as a market leader in the new competitive digital environment.”

OLG holds meaty slice of Ontario pie

More than three years after Ontario welcomed commercial competition to the provincial government’s online gambling platform, OLG purports to be the market leader.

The crown corporation will announce its actual results for the 2024-25 fiscal year later in 2025. Last year, the 2023-24 report came in October, more than six months after the year finished and after iGO published its own full annual figures. It showed that OLG’s total gross online gaming and sports betting revenue was $630 million, up 12% year-over-year.

Combining the OLG and iGO reports for the period from April 1, 2023, to March 31, 2024, OLG’s $630 million in gross gaming revenue was around 21% of the total of just over $3 billion reported by OLG plus all iGO operators.

In its latest Business Plan, OLG acknowledged that Ontario’s open-model market “continues to put pressure on our digital business.” However, it maintained that it is uniquely positioned to compete.

At the end of last year, the Auditor General of Ontario commended OLG for making good progress in competing with the province’s array of commercial online casino operators. The report found that as of November 2024, OLG had at least begun to implement 70% of recommendations made in 2022. That included developing a comprehensive strategy to introduce new iGaming products amid the influx of regulated competitors.

The report noted that between Feb. 1 and April 30, 2024, OLG launched 80 new games or about six new games per week.