In today’s sports-viewing experience, you’re bound to encounter an array of aggressive gambling sponsors. Commentators will reference point spreads, FanDuel will have its logo everywhere, and if you’re lucky you’ll even get a sponsored parlay. On social media, posts sponsored by betting sites are ingrained into sports content. The online sports betting industry in Ontario came about to regulate an unenforceable industry, but now their presence has become ingrained into the sports-viewing experience for everybody.
The extensive marketing strategies these online casinos and sportsbooks employ are beginning to get out of hand—and it’s undermining the rationale of their legalization in the first place.
The legalization of single-event sports betting through Bill C-218 in 2021 was presented as a practical solution to an unenforceable ban. What was sold to Canadians in 2021 to replace offshore and black-market betting with a safer, provincially controlled alternative has turned into an expanded industry that now saturates the broadcasts, social media and subconscious minds of sports fans of all ages. The initial aim was to bring existing activity under oversight, instead now it feels like Ontario sportsbooks just want as many people as possible to start gambling.
Canada hosts many legal industries with potentially harmful products or services. The tobacco, marijuana, and alcohol industries all—at the very least attempt to—operate with the rationale of managing harm, and not to increase the number of people struggling with addiction. With that,advertising in these industries is kept to tight guidelines to prevent the normalization of these potentially harmful and addictive products. Gambling sites, who also sell an addictive service, somehow get to launch these aggressive marketing campaigns with seemingly no concern with how normalizing an addictive hobby may damage our society.
Before 2021, Canadians could still legally bet on sports, but only in limited ways. Under the Criminal Code, single-event sports bets, like “Who will win tonight’s Leaf’s game”, were prohibited. This changed with Bill C-218, The Safe and Regulated Sports Betting Act, which amended the Criminal Code to legalize single-sport betting. In this process, each province also has the authority to regulate and operate its own lottery and sports betting systems.
Most justifications for this bill came in the idea that black market and offshore sportsbooks and casinos were already in operation in Canada. The Canadian Gaming Association estimates that Canadians were spending approximately ten billion per year on illegally conducted single sport bets, and another four billion in offshore internet sites that are not provincially regulated. Bill-218 was considered a pragmatic response to an unenforceable ban, which aimed to simply replace an unsafe and unprofitable black market with a regulated system that offers provincial control, domestic revenue and consumer protections—there is no need to pretend gambling can be eliminated entirely. So, the rationale is if Canada can create a legal gambling framework, then Canadians should see a share of that profit, and Canadian gamblers can feel safer accessing a hobby.
This shift dramatically increased easy online access to sportsbooks. After Ontario launched its regulated iGaming market in 2022, wagering volumes quickly climbed into the tens of billions annually, and sportsbooks responded with a surge of advertising that now dominates sports broadcasts and online spaces.
Ads on social media sites like Instagram and TikTok also operate in some sneaky ways. Numerous creators produce sponsored videos featuring a slots game or sports betting parlay halfway through video, woven into entertaining content. These videos often do not come with a direct disclosure that what you are watching is an ad and try to subtly embed casual sports betting into relatable or humorous content.
Theres certain boundaries sportsbooks and casinos are starting to cross, I think we ought to pay attention to just how much deterioration easy access online gambling can cause to a growing population.
To propose a solution, keep online gambling and single sport betting legal and allow the major sportsbooks/casinos to continue operating. However, leaving their marketing and user-traffic schemes unregulated is creating as many problems as it solves. Like other adult vices—drinking, marijuana, nicotine— Canada and its provinces give the citizen the autonomy to decide whether indulging in them is enjoyable enough to justify their downsides, and their legal industry is built to manage harm, not increase the number of addicts. Therefore, Online sports betting and casinosshould follow that same logic.
Contributed Graphics/Anna Koehler/Multimedia & Website Director
