Canada’s only regulated commercial iGaming market is a cash cow, there’s no doubt about that. But online casino seems to be the cream that rises to the top, and it risks leaving Ontario sports betting operators crying over spilled milk.
Alright, that metaphor turned a bit sour. The point here is to wonder aloud whether offering online sports betting in North America’s most overly saturated online gambling market is worth the punt for new arrivals stepping into the deepest of deep pools.
Ontario has 50 licensed commercial operators, a crowd that makes even the busiest U.S. legal online gambling state look sparse, and they collectively run 87 sites at the time of writing. Of the 35 sites that offer sports betting, virtually every single one also offers online casino, mostly on the same platform as the sportsbook. In contrast, around 40 sites are standalone online casinos with no sports betting offering.
To those with skin in the game or ears to the ground, this probably won’t be surprising. The general consensus is that it is easier to float in iCasino than OSB, in part because the margins in online casino are significantly greater than in sports wagering. To lean on what is a bit of an oversimplification, it’s the nature of the two businesses.
iCasino being highly profitable isn’t unique to Ontario, but it’s there where the difference is most pronounced.
Ontario: A Place To Grow… if you’re iCasino
Month after month, iGaming Ontario’s (iGO) data shows that almost nine in every 10 dollars wagered by players are spent on games like digital slots and tables and live dealer games rather than sports. iCasino was 89% of total wagering handle in July 2025 and 81% of operators’ GGR. Now, for reasons including the fact that there are significantly more operators offering online casino than there are sports betting, you would expect a big difference in the two verticals’ handle. But that is a huge difference.
Then, there’s the revenue generation. Sportsbooks’ total sports betting revenue has generally been flat year-over-year in 2025 and has actually declined from 2024 in four of the first seven months of the year. In striking contrast, iCasino revenue was up 37.4% YOY in July. The growth in operators’ online casino winnings is far outpacing the growth in iCasino play volume, which rose 27.3% in July.
Sports bets are often higher-stakes and bettors can be longer-term loyalists, but for operators, OSB is lower margins and lower handles, and it can be hard to make a ton of money unless you’re one of the biggest hitters. In iCasino, you may not get a big chunk of market share, but you can make a decent chunk of change with relatively small lift. For operators considering whether (or how) to join the fray now, more than three years in, is the payoff really going to be worth the hard work of trying to squeeze small percentage differentials in market share in search of a sports betting foothold?
The truth, as it often is, is that the answer isn’t yes or no. Sports betting is worth it for some but not for others, and it partly depends on what an operator wants from this province.
If you’re an online casino-focused brand like Vegas-based High Roller Technologies, which is about to join the horde, you’re probably confident of coming in and making money quickly. You can do your research, lean on expertise, offer an array of products with strong gamification, perhaps Canadianize your marketing and some of your games themselves, and you’ll likely put plenty of loonies and toonies in your pockets.
Won’t somebody please think of the sports fans?
But, if you’re sports-inclined, it’s probably hard to ignore the idea that — in gaming terms, at least — sports is just so damn sexy.
Actually watching the team might not always be sunshine and rainbows if you’re, say, a Toronto Maple Leafs fan, but watching sports and betting on them are nowadays inextricably linked for many viewers. And for operators, it tends to be the sports betting connections that attract the sponsorships and the TV eyes and everything that comes with that. There’s a reason (alright, many reasons) why, both as Ontario was gearing up to open its doors and once they were already fully ajar, operators were queuing up to strike deals with major sports teams.
Multiple recent examples illustrate the power of sports, although in different contexts.
Soft2Bet’s Canadian operator ToonieBet (nobody is mistaking the country of focus with a name like that) locked down deals with the Ottawa Senators and the Canadian Football League (CFL), recognizing the power of Canadian sports fandom in getting yourself recognized as an up-and-comer that may be packing a punch.
Meanwhile, Betty, an online casino that doesn’t even offer Ontario sports betting, is now an official gaming partner of the Leafs and the Toronto Raptors. Even when your customers can’t actually wager on sports on your platforms, you can’t deny the appeal of sports. Perhaps there is an opportunity for non-sportsbook online casinos to tangentially benefit from sports, riding the coattails of fandom to boost their own audience.
But if you’re an operator intent on offering sports betting to millions of sports fans in Ontario, you’d best prepare yourself for a long, hard slog. And, dare I say, you’d best have a functional and appealing online casino built in, too, to help you stay afloat with those delicious margins and a greater opportunity to innovate on product and variety. As folk from storied and longstanding British bookie Fitzdares put it as they headed for the Ontario exit earlier this year, it’s gotten “prohibitive” out there for sportsbooks, particularly if you have a market share of only a fraction of a percent.
Think it over and get back to us
This musing isn’t to suggest there’s no value in a sports betting offering for a regulated commercial operator in Ontario, or any other future province. Alberta has a wealth of sports-mad, of-gambling-age residents who will no doubt warmly embrace more legal sportsbooks, even if the government-owned Play Alberta has moved to corner the sports partnerships market. Get things right there, and a sportsbook could enjoy itself greatly.
For as long as sports have existed, people have staked things on the results, and sports betting isn’t going away anytime soon. It’s a big piece of the Canadian gaming puzzle. But it can’t make sense for all operators.
Ontario’s example shows that online casino is where the margins are and where the money is for those who can capture even a modest sliver of the market. Perhaps the question for many operators is not how they should approach Ontario sports betting, but whether they should bother.
