Ontario’s iGaming market runs on a two-body framework that splits licensing and standard-setting from the commercial side of running the market. This page covers how that structure works, what the numbers look like (including a record monthly handle of C$9.59 billion in March 2026), how much play is happening on regulated versus unregulated sites, and what player protection changes have come in this year. By the end, you’ll have a clear picture of how the market is built and how it’s performing.
The Legal and Structural Foundation of the Regulated Market
Ontario runs the only province-level regulated private-operator iGaming market in Canada. The system is built on a structural split between a regulatory body and a conduct-and-manage entity. That two-entity framework went live commercially on April 4, 2022. On May 12, 2025, the proclamation of the iGaming Ontario Act, 2024, passed through Bill 216, changed the relationship between those two entities by converting the conduct-and-manage body from a subsidiary of the regulator into an independent Crown agency.
Origin of the Market and the 2025 Legislative Change
The conduct-and-manage entity, iGaming Ontario, was originally set up on July 6, 2021, as a subsidiary of the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO). It was created specifically to carry out the province’s constitutional “conduct and manage” obligation for the new private-operator market, which launched commercially on April 4, 2022.
The May 12, 2025 proclamation of the iGaming Ontario Act, 2024 dissolved that parent-subsidiary relationship and reconstituted iGaming Ontario as a standalone Crown agency and a corporation without share capital. This matters because it formally separates regulatory standard-setting from commercial market conduct within a single ownership chain. That’s what sets Ontario’s framework apart from most other Canadian provincial gambling regimes, where a single Crown entity typically handles both functions. OLG.ca continues to operate as a separate government-run internet gaming site alongside the private operator market.
How Private Operators Enter the Market
Getting into the market takes two steps. First, an operator must get registration from the AGCO under the Registrar’s Standards for Internet Gaming, which sets the baseline compliance conditions for participation. Only after that registration is granted can the operator sign an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario, which covers the commercial and operational terms of market participation.
This two-step structure is what separates licensed operators from unregulated sites that Ontario residents can still access: only operators that hold both AGCO registration and an active operating agreement are authorized to offer real-money iGaming products to players in the province. As of March 31, 2025, there were 50 active operating agreements in force, the most recently reported total at the close of the 2024–25 fiscal year.
The Dual Regulatory Structure and Its Division of Responsibilities
Ontario’s iGaming framework uses two distinct bodies because the province has to reconcile a constitutional requirement (that lawful gambling be “conducted and managed” by the provincial Crown) with the commercial participation of private operators. The province resolved this by separating regulation from operation. The Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO) sets and enforces the rules of conduct, while iGaming Ontario contracts with private operators and carries out the province’s conduct-and-manage obligation. The two mandates are deliberately non-overlapping, and that division shapes how compliance, market data, and operator accountability flow through the system.
The Regulator’s Standard-Setting and Enforcement Role
The AGCO sets and enforces the Registrar’s Standards for Internet Gaming, the rulebook governing regulated online gambling in Ontario. The Standards cover responsible gambling, game integrity, anti-money laundering controls, prevention of underage access, privacy and information security, and sport and event betting integrity. Each of these areas corresponds to a recognized category of player-side risk: problem gambling exposure, rigged or unfair games, illicit financial flows, minors accessing gambling products, data loss, and match or event manipulation.
Enforcement authority comes from the Gaming Control Act, which gives the Registrar the power to establish Standards and Requirements for the conduct, management, and operation of gaming sites. Operators must register with the AGCO before they can do business in the Ontario market, and staying registered depends on ongoing compliance. The AGCO can update Standards as risks change. Its 2024 revised guidance, for example, strengthened requirements on advertising and marketing. That ability to update the rules is the main mechanism through which player protection is actually enforced, not just declared.
The Conduct-and-Manage Entity’s Operational Role
iGaming Ontario holds the operational mandate. It develops and executes the operating agreements that bind each private operator to the province, manages the policies and programs those agreements require, and publishes the data that documents market activity. The operating agreements are how iGaming Ontario satisfies its “conduct and manage” obligation: operators trade under agreements with iGaming Ontario, not licences issued by it.
iGaming Ontario does not set the Registrar’s Standards and does not enforce compliance. Those functions sit with the AGCO. Because iGaming Ontario holds the operating agreements and collects gaming data centrally from every contracted operator, it’s also the entity that issues the monthly and annual market performance figures. Publishing those numbers through a single conduct-and-manage entity, rather than through each operator separately, produces a consolidated and methodologically consistent view of the market.
Market Scale and Performance Through Early 2026
Ontario’s regulated iGaming market is tracked through two reporting cadences: the annual fiscal-year report published by iGaming Ontario, and the monthly performance releases that disclose handle, revenue, and product-level breakdowns. Calendar year 2025 saw accelerated growth across both wagering volume and operator revenue, and the opening months of 2026 have kept setting new monthly handle records.
Fiscal Year 2024–25 Baseline
The most recent complete fiscal-year figures cover April 1, 2024 to March 31, 2025. According to iGaming Ontario’s Annual Report 2024–2025, total cash wagers came in at C$82.7 billion and non-adjusted gross gaming revenue at C$3.2 billion. Wagering rose 31% year over year and gaming revenue rose 32% over the prior fiscal year. The market closed the year with 50 active operating agreements and more than 2.6 million active player accounts. Casino products accounted for C$69.6 billion of total wagers, betting for C$11.4 billion, and peer-to-peer poker for C$1.7 billion. Promotional wagers (bonuses) are excluded from the reported handle.
Calendar Year 2025 Totals and Year-Over-Year Growth
On a calendar-year basis, licensed operators handled approximately C$98.3 billion in total cash wagers in 2025, a 26% increase over 2024, and generated approximately C$4 billion in non-adjusted gross gaming revenue, a 34% increase year over year. December 2025 set monthly records at the time of reporting, with C$9.5 billion in wagering and C$425.4 million in revenue. Because iGaming Ontario reports revenue figures before Ontario’s 20% iGaming tax is applied, the 2025 totals imply roughly C$807 million in provincial tax receipts for the calendar year, with operators retaining about C$3.2 billion after tax. That tax figure is derived from the reported NAGGR rather than a separately published provincial accounting line.
Early 2026 Monthly Performance
Through the first quarter of 2026, each reported month either matched or exceeded the prior handle record. Cumulatively, Q1 2026 reached C$27.8 billion in wagers and C$1.13 billion in operator revenue. The March 2026 report also marked a structural milestone: cumulative operator revenue since the April 2022 launch surpassed C$10 billion, reaching approximately C$10.2 billion across the nearly four-year period. The table below shows the monthly handle and revenue figures for the most recently reported months.
| Reporting Month | Total Wagers (Handle) | Operator Revenue | Notable Signal |
|---|---|---|---|
| December 2025 | C$9.5 billion | C$425.4 million | Monthly record at time of reporting |
| January 2026 | C$9.52 billion | C$401.5 million | Record month to open the year |
| March 2026 | C$9.59 billion | C$387 million | New monthly handle record; +30% YoY revenue |
Product Mix and Player Account Growth
Ontario’s headline market totals don’t tell the whole story. iCasino, sports betting, and online poker each followed different paths through early 2026, with one vertical absorbing most of the growth and another actually shrinking year over year. Active player account numbers kept climbing through March 2026, but well below the pace of revenue growth, which is worth paying attention to.
Distribution Across iCasino, Sports Betting, and Online Poker
iCasino accounted for 82% of total operator revenue in March 2026, cementing its position as the dominant vertical. That’s consistent with calendar 2025, when iCasino’s share of monthly handle never fell below 83% and peaked near 89% during summer months. Sports betting handle in March 2026 declined 9% year over year, meaning wagering volume actually contracted even as iCasino expanded.
Online poker reached a record monthly handle of C$183 million in March 2026, but the vertical still represented less than 2% of total iGaming activity. That ceiling is partly a product of Ontario-only player liquidity.
The overall picture is one of concentration rather than balanced expansion. Growth in the market is being driven almost entirely by iCasino, while sports betting has moved from slower growth into year-over-year contraction at the handle level. Whether that contraction reflects a lasting plateau or a cyclical shift tied to specific sporting calendars can’t be determined from a single month of data.
Active Player Account Trajectory
Active player accounts reached 1.235 million in March 2026, a 17% year-over-year increase. For context, iGaming Ontario reported more than 2.6 million active accounts across the full 2024–25 fiscal year. That’s a cumulative figure that counts unique accounts active at any point during the twelve-month period, not within a single month. The 17% account growth rate sits well below the approximately 34% revenue growth recorded across calendar 2025, which suggests the market’s expansion is being driven less by new participants and more by rising spend per active account.
Channelization — Regulated Versus Unregulated Activity
Channelization measures the share of online gambling activity happening on licensed platforms relative to the total volume of online gambling, regulated and unregulated combined. It’s the most direct indicator of whether Ontario’s framework is doing what it’s supposed to do: moving players onto sites that operate under the Registrar’s Standards for Internet Gaming and the conduct-and-manage agreements administered by iGaming Ontario. Without a high channelization rate, the protections built into the regulated market (game integrity rules, anti-money laundering controls, advertising standards, and self-exclusion tools) apply to only a fraction of actual play.
Reported Channelization Rates and Their Sources
Two figures are currently in public circulation. iGaming Ontario’s 2024–25 Annual Report states a channelization rate of 83.7% for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2025, with a stated target of reaching 85% in 2025–26. An earlier Ipsos study commissioned by the AGCO, conducted in February 2024, found that 86.4% of Ontarians who had gambled online in the preceding three months did so on regulated sites.
The two numbers come from different methodologies. The iGaming Ontario figure combines operator-reported activity data with anonymous annual player surveys, using the survey component to estimate the unregulated share that operator data can’t directly observe. The Ipsos figure is a point-in-time consumer survey of recent online gambling behaviour. Because unregulated operators don’t file data with Ontario authorities, both approaches rely on self-reported player behaviour to size the unregulated denominator. Read them as complementary measurements taken at different points and through different instruments, not as competing estimates of the same thing.
Player Protection Developments in 2026
2026 is the first calendar year in which Ontario’s player protection framework has expanded materially beyond the original Registrar’s Standards for Internet Gaming that took effect at market launch in April 2022. Three distinct developments define the change: a new advertising complaint channel run by the national self-regulatory body, a centralized self-exclusion program scheduled for May 2026, and a private member’s bill proposing a blanket prohibition on operator advertising.
Advertising Oversight Effective January 1, 2026
As of January 1, 2026, Ad Standards, the national advertising self-regulatory body, began accepting public complaints under the Canadian Code for Advertising of Gambling. The mechanism introduces a formal complaint intake and review process for gambling advertising directed at Ontario consumers, with adjudication conducted against the Code’s specific provisions on responsible messaging, targeting, and the depiction of winnings.
This doesn’t replace the AGCO’s existing advertising-related provisions inside the Registrar’s Standards. Instead, it adds a second, consumer-facing channel on top of the regulator’s compliance regime, giving the public a direct route to lodge complaints about specific ads or campaigns. For player protection purposes, the practical effect is two parallel accountability tracks: one administrative and operator-facing through the AGCO, and one complaint-driven and creative-facing through Ad Standards.
The Centralized Self-Exclusion Program
In December 2025, the AGCO announced standards for a centralized self-exclusion program for iGaming, with the program scheduled to launch under the name BetGuard in May 2026. Under the existing system, a player who wants to self-exclude has to register separately with each licensed operator they hold an account with, meaning the exclusion doesn’t extend to any operator the player hasn’t individually contacted.
The centralized program collapses that process into a single registration that applies across all licensed operators at once, with term options of six months, one year, and five years as set out in the Registrar’s Standards. The policy direction follows a 144% rise in calls to ConnexOntario, the provincial mental health and addictions helpline, since the regulated market opened in 2022.
Proposed Restrictions on Operator Advertising
Bill 107, the Stop Gambling Advertising Act, was introduced in the Ontario legislature and proposes to prohibit licensed operators from promoting gambling through any channel. The bill is a private member’s initiative sponsored by a party that does not control the provincial parliament, and passage is considered unlikely on that basis.
The proposal sits against a broader public health backdrop: approximately 1 in 3 Canadians aged 18 to 29 now participates in online gambling, and approximately 1 in 4 of those participants report significant harm. Comprehensive advertising restrictions of the kind Bill 107 contemplates are not on a path to enactment in the current parliament, though the underlying harm data continues to shape the policy conversation around operator marketing conduct.
The Scheduled 2026 Regulatory Review
A formal regulatory review of Ontario’s iGaming market was scheduled for July 13, 2026. It’s the first comprehensive policy reassessment of the framework since commercial launch on April 4, 2022, and the first since the May 12, 2025 proclamation that dissolved the parent-subsidiary relationship between the AGCO and iGaming Ontario and converted the latter into a standalone Crown agency. The review brings together the three pressures documented across this article: handle growth that pushed calendar 2025 wagers to approximately C$98.3 billion, a channelization rate of 83.7% that remains below the 85% target set for 2025–26, and an expanding player protection framework that now includes the BetGuard centralized self-exclusion program and Ad Standards complaint oversight. Its scope and terms of reference have not been published.
What to Watch in Ontario’s iGaming Market Through 2026
A channelization rate of 83.7%, just 1.3 points below the 85% target, tells a more nuanced story than raw handle records alone. Ontario’s regulated market is close to its benchmark, but not there yet. That gap matters because the July 13, 2026 regulatory review will likely use it as a pressure point, especially alongside BetGuard’s expanding role in player protection and the structural shift to an independent conduct-and-manage entity. March 2026’s record C$9.59 billion handle confirms strong demand. The real question is whether regulatory momentum can convert that volume into full channelization, which makes iGaming Ontario’s monthly performance releases worth following closely for anyone tracking how that answer develops.
