Key Takeaways
- Ontario iGaming grew in September 2026, with handle up 13.6% and gross gaming revenue up 26.2% year over year.
- While online casino continues to account for more than 80% of both handle and revenue, online sports betting saw surging 47% growth from September 2025.
- Ontario had a new all-time record of more than 1.4 million active player accounts, after recent market debuts from major U.S. brands Hard Rock Bet and Fanatics Casino.
The regulated Ontario iGaming market’s growth curve might be flattening slightly, but an all-time record number of player accounts drove year-over-year gains in both handle and revenue in September 2026.
iGaming Ontario (iGO) reported $9.71bn in cash wagers for the month, down slightly from both July and August but 13.6% ahead of September 2025’s $8.55bn.
Annual growth in non-adjusted gross gaming revenue (NAGGR) was twice as strong, as licensed operators’ gross win surged 26.2% year over year to reach $416.3m, up from $329.8m in the same month last year. That was the highest monthly total of the year, since December 2025’s $425.6m.
Ontario’s 20% tax rate on iGaming means those operator winnings yielded around $83m in tax revenue in September, taking the nine-month year-to-date total return to the province over $700m.
Active Ontario iGaming accounts grow 20%
Active player accounts rose to a new all-time record of 1.41 million, up 20.1% year-on-year and 16.8% on August. The average revenue per active Ontario iGaming account fell to $295, its lowest total since February 2026, but that was up 5.4% year over year.
The higher number of active accounts may be partly due to the long-awaited debut of a top-tier U.S. brand in Ontario’s market. Fanatics Betting & Gaming launched Fanatics Casino in the province on Sept. 1, six weeks after Hard Rock Bet made its Canadian debut by going live in Ontario on July 22.
Online casino still dominates, but sports betting revenue soars
As always, online casino made up the bulk of the market by both wagering handle and operator revenue.
iCasino accounted for $8.50bn of the total handle (88% of the market) and $340.8m of total Ontario iGaming revenue (82%). Operators’ winnings from online casino rose 22.7% year over year.
However, as the new football season got into full swing and NHL betting ramped up ahead of puck drop, Ontario’s licensed online sportsbooks had a much better September in 2026 than they did in 2025:
- Sports betting handle rose 27% month-over-month from $843m in August to $1.07bn in September.
- Revenue also jumped 27% from August, up from $54.4m to $69.1m.
- Year over year, sports betting revenue surged 47.3% from September 2025, despite just 1.2% growth in handle.
Sports betting represented 11% of all Ontario iGaming wagering in September, and 17% of total aggregated operator revenue.
Ontario, Alberta expected to pool players to boost poker
Meanwhile, peer-to-peer poker games took $130m in cash wagers and yielded $6.4m in revenue for operators. That vertical remains highly limited as players in Ontario can only compete against other players in Ontario.
That could change in the future; the Supreme Court of Canada is considering whether to uphold an Ontario Court of Appeal decision that would allow the province to ppol players of P2P games with other countries.
Separate from that case, the Ontario and Alberta governments are expected to soon announce an agreement to share P2P online poker games between their respective regulated iGaming markets.
“We’re working hard on shared liquidity with Ontario,” Alberta iGaming Corporation (AiGC) CEO Dan Keene told Canadian Gaming Business in October. “I anticipate we’ll have an announcement coming on that fairly quickly. And we’ll see what happens with the Supreme Court ruling.”
More Ontario iGaming sites coming soon
At the time of writing, the regulated Ontario iGaming market hosts a total of 50 authorized operators (including the government-owned Ontario Lottery and Gaming, which reports separately). The 49 iGaming Ontario-managed operators run a total of 84 online gambling sites.
Others may soon arrive. The Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO) approved several new Ontario iGaming operators in October, including:
- Betsson-owned Betsafe
- Malta-based international brand BetMaster
- Sunflower Gaming Ltd.’s Loonie Casino
Alberta’s market as casino-heavy as Ontario’s
Ontario reported its September 2026 iGaming results days after the AiGC published its very first regulated market report, which covers the period from the province’s launch date of July 13 to Sept. 30.
Alberta reported that in September:
- The province hosted 24 licensed operators running more than 30 iGaming sites.
- There were more than 388,000 active player accounts on those sites.
- Total wagering handle was $1.22bn.
- Operators made $56.6m in gross gaming revenue.
- Alberta’s market is split very similarly to Ontario’s: Online casino accounted for 88% of total iGaming handle and 80.5% of GGR, with online sports betting comprising 12% of wagering and 19.5% of revenue.
Alberta’s regulated iGaming market has since expanded to more than 30 separate operators running 51 licensed commercial sites, as of Oct. 30. Just as Ontario’s commercial brands compete with OLG, Alberta’s share the market with the government-run Play Alberta.
Keene told Canadian Gaming Business that AiGC expects 10 to 15 more licensed sites in Alberta by the end of 2026, rto take the total to as many as 65. Operators including Ontario-licensed PointsBet Canada and Alberta First Nations-owned brick-and-mortar casino River Cree are planning to start taking bets soon.
