Ontario’s online gambling market grew by more than 20% year over year in January 2026, as a new provincial record monthly Ontario iGaming handle was fueled by a larger upswing in online casino activity.
The first revenue report of the year from iGaming Ontario (iGO) showed that the total dollar amount wagered on licensed platforms for the month was 21.4% higher than it was in January 2025, at a new all-time high of $9.52bn.
That January gambling activity in Canada’s only open regulated iGaming market translated to a total of $401.5m in non-adjusted gross gaming revenue (NAGGR) for the 48 licensed commercial operators who are currently operational in the province.
That aggregated revenue was 22.2% higher than January 2025 but down 6% from December 2025’s all-time monthly record of more than $425m.
Online casinos making 33% more than last year
Ontario is approaching its fourth anniversary of regulated iGaming, having opened its market in early April 2022. Over the time since, the biggest pattern that has emerged — other than strong annual growth continuing year after year — is that online casino gaming dominates both player spending and operator earnings.
That certainly persisted in January, as 86% of the total monthly handle ($8.18bn) was laid down by gamblers on iCasino. Meanwhile, Ontarians gambled $1.18bn on sports last month, while $156m was wagered on fenced-in peer-to-peer poker games in the province.
The monthly online casino handle was 25.6% higher than January 2025, whereas the sports betting spend was a tiny decrease of around 0.25% year over year.
The biggest year-over-year growth in Ontario iGaming for the first month of 2026 came in the money that operators made from online casino gaming. iCasino NAGGR was $308.9m, an increase of 33.7% from January 2025, continuing another repeated pattern: Online casino revenue grows at a faster rate than online casino handle.
iCasino represented 77% of the iGO market by revenue share in January.
Sports betting less lucrative than a year ago
In contrast, the total sports betting revenue for operators in January was $86.7m, some 5.8% lower than the first month of 2025. It should be noted that January 2025 was an incongruously successful month for Ontario sportsbooks, with a revenue total of $92m that wasn’t beaten until November.
Around 22% of all regulated online gambling spending in Ontario last month was on sports.
All in all, there was a record of more than 1.32 million active player accounts in January 2026, 19.9% more than this time last year. But the average revenue per active account was relatively flat, up just 2% from January 2025 to $303. That was down 9% month over month from December’s record of $333 in NAGGR per account.
Momentum continues after booming 2025
The January results build on a full-year picture which shows that Ontario’s active licensed operators took more than $98bn in wagering volume throughout 2025 and made more than $4bn in NAGGR. The province charges operators a 20% revenue share rate, meaning that Ontario made more than $800m in tax money from regulated iGaming in 2025. It added another $80m or so in the first month of 2026.
Ontario iGaming handle has now eclipsed $9bn in all of the last four months, and has broken the $400m revenue barrier in the last three.
iGO’s reporting encompasses 48 licensed and active commercial operators, which collectively run more than 80 approved real-money gambling sites at the time of writing. It does not include activity on the online platforms of the government-run Ontario Lottery and Gaming (OLG). As of Feb. 25, 2026, OLG still has not released its full annual breakdown for its 2024-25 reporting year, which ended March 31, 2025.
Operators waiting at door in Ontario and Alberta
Other brands are waiting in the wings to enter Ontario, including sports streaming giant DAZN, which received a license in January from the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO) to launch DAZN Bet in Ontario in 2026.
Meanwhile, many of the brands that compete in Ontario, by far the most saturated online gambling market in North America in terms of the number of licensees, are preparing to begin business in Alberta, or to transition from grey-market status in that province. The target timeline for Alberta becoming the second province to launch commercial iGaming is currently around June or July.
