The Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO) has penalized licensed Ontario iGaming operators before, but never quite like this.
The $350,000 fine that the AGCO handed to FanDuel last week in relation to several weeks’ worth of suspicious betting activity on Czech table tennis in 2024 was noteworthy for two reasons.
Firstly, it is believed to be the largest fine ever doled out to an online gaming operator by the government agency since Ontario launched regulated online gambling in April 2022. It’s the same as the fine that Great Canadian Entertainment received after an electronic dance music event at a Toronto casino ended in alleged assaults, overdoses and “acts of public indecency.”
Secondly, while past iGaming fines have focused on violations such as advertising infractions or player protection failures, the AGCO has never issued one for this reason before.
“Yes, this is the first time penalties have been issued with respect to integrity failures,” AGCO Chief Operating Officer Dave Phillips told Canadian Gaming Business after the fine was announced. “One of our top goals at the AGCO is to ensure that sportsbooks in Ontario are not compromised by fixers and by insiders. And another is to ensure that we are contributing to the global fight against match-fixing and to ensure that the integrity of sport is protected.”
Not a new issue, but a heightened concern
AGCO has addressed sporting integrity before. In December 2022, when Ontario’s market was just eight months old, it banned bets on UFC events after it found that the UFC did not prohibit all insiders from betting on its events amid public allegations of compromised integrity. The AGCO lifted the ban a few weeks later when the UFC announced measures to address the issue.
In 2024, the AGCO ordered sportsbooks to stop offering betting markets on World Boxing Association events, citing an investigation’s findings that the WBA was vulnerable to insider betting and match-fixing.
Sports scandals existed before North American governments began regulating online wagering. But scrutiny on sports’ relationship with betting has intensified greatly in the last couple of years.
The event that ratcheted things up a notch had strong Canadian ties, too, as then-Toronto Raptor Jontay Porter was ultimately found guilty of manipulating his own performances for the purposes of profiting from bets on individual prop wagers. Since then, the NBA, MLB, and U.S. college sports have all had their own high-profile, damaging betting-related scandals.
Ontario’s walls must stay up, says AGCO
Amid it all, Canada’s federal government published a Sport Integrity Framework and formed an International Workgroup on Integrity in Sport in late 2024, highlighting sports betting as an issue that may threaten athlete safety and sporting integrity. Phillips and his AGCO colleague Doug Hood also spoke at the annual Council of Europe Macolin Community Conference last April on how Ontario gaming stakeholders must work together to combat the issue.
The AGCO’s fine of FanDuel signals how seriously the AGCO is taking the issue, said Phillips.
“The reality is that sportsbooks are the first line of defence,” Phillips added. “They have the data and the ability to monitor wagering in real time. When that line of defence breaks down, that’s not okay, and that’s ultimately why we’re pursuing this enforcement action.”
Phillips noted that, between them, AGCO and iGaming Ontario have strict rules in place around monitoring, including that licensed operators must work with an independent integrity monitor to track activity in real time. There are also stringent requirements around reporting instances of suspicious betting, something on which the regulator’s displeasure with FanDuel focused.
In a statement responding to the AGCO fine, FanDuel argued that the strength of its integrity monitoring program allowed it to proactively identify, investigate and report the suspicious activity to integrity monitors. The operator did not disclose which monitoring firm was involved, but FanDuel is a member of the International Betting Integrity Association (IBIA), along with DraftKings, bet365, BetMGM co-parent Entain, Betway and other recognizable names from Ontario’s iGaming market.
A network of safety nets
Phillips said he was not in a position to confirm how exactly the 144 bets on Czech table tennis on FanDuel over five weeks in late 2024 were flagged as potential match-fixing. But he did note that monitoring firms such as IBIA and Integrity Compliance 360 are a key avenue and played an integral role in exposing the recent U.S. major-league sports betting scandals.
The AGCO also gets alerts from operators, leagues, other regulatory bodies or police intelligence, said Phillips. The Ontario Provincial Police Investigation and Enforcement Bureau (IEB), embedded within the AGCO, launched a criminal investigation into the Porter incident and confirmed to Canadian Gaming Business that it has done so again here. FanDuel retains the right to appeal until late January.
In the meantime, from Phillips’ perspective, the key point is that operators and other stakeholders should know that sports and betting integrity are top of mind for Ontario’s regulator.
“The fine certainly is a representation and a reflection of the fact that the AGCO is dedicating considerable resources to this,” he said. “We have a dedicated sports betting integrity team that works every single day with various partners to ensure that controls are in place and that information is being effectively disseminated so that these investigations can take place.”
