BC hasn’t opened its market to private operators for one core reason: it runs online gambling through BCLC’s PlayNow.com as a Crown monopoly, while Ontario moved to a licensed private-operator model in April 2022. This page explains why those two provinces went in different directions. It covers how BC’s Crown monopoly works, how much wagering is happening outside it, and what the Ontario model (plus Alberta’s emerging approach) tells us by comparison. By the end, you’ll have enough context to understand the trade-offs each province made and where BC’s policy is likely headed.
The Provincial Crown-Monopoly Model for Online Gambling
British Columbia runs online gambling through a single Crown-corporation platform, which holds the only legal online gambling licence in the province. Under provincial law, gambling is only legal when the provincial government conducts and manages it. That boundary has held firm against any private-sector alternative. No competitive licensing system exists, no private operator holds a provincial iGaming licence, and BC has not adopted the open-market structure used elsewhere in Canada. It’s a single-channel Crown monopoly, and that remains the province’s stated policy.
How the Single-Licence Crown Structure Functions
The British Columbia Lottery Corporation (BCLC) is a provincial Crown corporation that manages all commercial gambling for the BC government, including the province’s only legal online gambling site, PlayNow.com. The Independent Gambling Control Office of BC confirms PlayNow.com as the sole regulated online gambling site permitted in the province. Revenue from the platform goes to the province, with portions going to host local governments, First Nations through the BC First Nations Gaming Revenue Sharing Limited Partnership, and community grant programs.
Inside BC, “legal iGaming” has a narrow meaning: it refers only to wagering through that single government-run channel. No private operator can legally take bets from BC residents through a provincially licensed online channel. Every other online gambling option a resident might use, including international sportsbooks, offshore casino sites, and peer-to-peer poker rooms hosted abroad, falls outside the provincially regulated system, regardless of how those operators present themselves to Canadian users.
The Policy Rationale for Preserving the Monopoly
Three reasons come up consistently in the public record. The first is revenue: profits from the Crown channel go back to the province and fund community grants, host local governments, and First Nations revenue sharing. A private-operator licensing system would change that flow. The second is harm reduction and anti-money-laundering oversight. The province has said it is “committed to disrupting illicit behaviour within B.C. and keeping dirty money out of gambling facilities,” and the new Gaming Control Act, which came into force on April 13, 2026, was framed by Minister of Public Safety and Solicitor General Nina Krieger as creating “a strong regulatory framework” for the Independent Gambling Control Office to address criminal activity and protect residents.
The third reason is political reluctance to give up an established Crown revenue stream, though that framing is contested. John Les, when serving as the minister responsible for gambling, pushed back on it directly, saying on record that despite “the huge gaming revenue,” he did not think British Columbia was “addicted to the revenue.” No current provincial policy document lays out a formal defence of the monopoly model against a private-operator alternative.
The Scale of Wagering Outside the Regulated Perimeter
One fact keeps coming up in coverage of BC’s online gambling policy: a large share of online wagering by residents happens on sites the province doesn’t license, regulate, or tax. PlayNow is the only legal channel, but it competes with offshore operators that take BC players without provincial authorization. This section pulls together the available figures on that parallel activity, identifies what’s reliably known, and flags what remains unverifiable because the underlying government analysis hasn’t been made public.
Market Share Split Between the Regulated and Unregulated Channels
Estimates suggest BCLC’s PlayNow captures about 51% of online gambling activity in the province each year, with the rest happening on unlicensed offshore sites. That figure comes from industry analysis rather than audited measurement, and it means roughly half of residents who gamble online are doing so outside the regulated system.
A government report from 2021 estimated that British Columbians wager as much as C$5.3 billion per year on unregulated gambling websites. The report was never released publicly. Its formal title and authoring ministry haven’t been disclosed, and the figure has only reached the public through journalism citing internal sources. That provenance is worth keeping in mind when weighing the number’s reliability.
Residents using unregulated sites aren’t a fringe group. They include players looking for products, odds, or promotions that PlayNow doesn’t offer, and players who found offshore brands through advertising or affiliate channels before ever considering the Crown platform. When they wager on those sites, they lose access to provincially enforced consumer protections, responsible-gambling tools tied to BC residency, formal dispute resolution, and oversight of operator solvency. A monopoly model that leaves roughly half of online wagering outside its reach isn’t channelling the market it was designed to serve.
What the Province Cannot See or Tax
Activity on offshore sites is invisible to provincial authorities. The Independent Gambling Control Office has no jurisdiction over those platforms, which means no enforcement of responsible-gambling standards, no audited dispute resolution, no provincially supervised anti-money-laundering controls, and no integrity oversight of game outcomes or payouts. The province also collects no revenue from that wagering. The unreleased report is described as identifying tens of millions of dollars in forgone potential tax revenue annually.
Since Parliament legalized single-event sports betting in 2021, offshore sportsbooks have expanded their sports-betting and single-game offerings to BC residents in markets that overlap directly with PlayNow’s own sports-betting products. The Crown platform offers these markets but doesn’t hold them in practice.
The Open-Market Comparator Province
Ontario launched its regulated open iGaming market on April 4, 2022, becoming the first jurisdiction in Canada to license private operators to offer online casino games and sports betting to residents. Before that, the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation (OLG) was the only internet gaming site regulated by the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO), a structure that mirrored the Crown monopoly still in place in BC. The April 2022 launch replaced that single-licensee model with a multi-operator system run by iGaming Ontario (iGO), a subsidiary of the AGCO that signs operating agreements with each licensed private brand.
How Licensed Private Operators Function in the Open Model
Under Ontario’s framework, the AGCO sets regulatory standards and registers private operators, while iGaming Ontario signs the operating agreement that lets each registered brand offer online casino and sportsbook products to Ontario residents. Operators must follow enforceable rules covering consumer protection, responsible gambling, advertising and marketing standards, anti-money-laundering obligations, and game integrity requirements.
That distinction matters when evaluating the model. An open market isn’t an unregulated market. It’s a regulated market with multiple licensed competitors, as opposed to a regulated market served by a single government licensee. In Ontario, legal iGaming includes dozens of private brands operating under provincial registration, each subject to the same regulatory rules. In BC, legal iGaming means PlayNow.com only. The difference isn’t between regulation and deregulation. It’s between two regulated setups: one government licensee versus many licensed private competitors.
Reported Market Outcomes Since Launch
Ontario’s regulated market generated C$3.2 billion in total gaming revenue during the 2024-25 fiscal year, representing 32% growth over the prior year, according to iGaming Ontario. Total wagering through the regulated channel exceeded C$82.7 billion across the same period. As of March 31, 2025, iGaming Ontario reported 50 active operating agreements with gaming operators registered to serve the Ontario market.
A verified channelization figure, meaning the regulator’s published estimate of what share of total online wagering now goes through licensed operators versus offshore sites, hasn’t been published in the sources reviewed for Ontario’s most recent fiscal year. Industry commentary and earlier regulator references have pointed to channelization above 85% as a working estimate, but that figure hasn’t been formally confirmed in the 2024-25 reporting cycle. Operator count, revenue, and wagering volumes are the directly reported metrics. Channelization remains an inferred indicator.
The Second Provincial Comparator Moving Toward an Open Market
Ontario’s 2022 launch could once be read as a single-province departure from the Crown-monopoly model that still defines online gambling in most of Canada. That reading no longer holds. Alberta has legislated and scheduled its own transition to a regulated open iGaming system, making it the second province to license private operators to take wagers from residents under provincial rules. That shift changes BC’s position: the province is no longer an outlier relative to one neighbour but relative to a growing pattern of provinces moving in the opposite direction.
The Framework and Operator Registrations Ahead of Launch
Alberta’s regulated iGaming market is scheduled to open on July 13, 2026, with the Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis Commission (AGLC) acting as the provincial regulator overseeing operator licensing and compliance. Under the framework, private sportsbook and online casino operators will be permitted to offer online poker, casino, and sports-betting products directly to Alberta residents, replacing a model where the provincial Crown platform was the only legal channel. As of May 2026, the AGLC had approved 28 operators ahead of launch. Confirmed registrants include BetMGM, Bet99, and BetNova, with the full operator list released by the regulator in the months before the launch date.
Pre-launch registration at that scale shows that major commercial operators already active in Ontario, and in regulated markets outside Canada, have the licensing, compliance, and technical infrastructure to enter a new provincial market on a set timeline. It also shows how quickly an open framework can be populated once a provincial government commits to one: from legislative decision to a regulator with dozens of approved operators in a compressed window, not a multi-year build-out.
Industry Lobbying Pressure on the Provincial Government
The provincial status quo isn’t going unchallenged. Online gambling companies have actively lobbied the BC government to adopt a regulatory framework similar to Ontario’s open iGaming model, and that pressure has continued even as the province has said it has no plans to change current gambling laws. The structural arguments covered earlier, including a multi-billion-dollar wagering volume outside the regulated system and two provinces moving to licensed private-operator regimes, are matched on the political side by direct lobbying activity registered under the province’s Lobbyists Transparency Act.
What the Industry Is Asking the Province to Adopt
The lobbying position centres on a regulator-administered licensing system that would let private operators offer online casino and sportsbook products to BC residents under enforceable provincial rules, either alongside the BCLC channel or in place of its exclusivity. The model being referenced is Ontario’s: a provincial regulator issuing licences to multiple competing operators, with consumer-protection, responsible-gambling, advertising, and anti-money-laundering obligations attached to each licence.
The groups pushing this position include private-operator trade associations, individual operators already licensed in Ontario, and payment and technology suppliers whose market would grow under a licensed BC framework. On the other side are harm-reduction advocates concerned about expanded commercial availability, defenders of the Crown-revenue model that directs PlayNow profits to provincial programs, and BCLC employee interests tied to the existing monopoly structure.
The reason the province hasn’t moved yet, despite the unregulated-market figures and the Ontario and Alberta precedents, is that lobbying pressure hasn’t overridden the fiscal and political logic behind the Crown channel. The government’s position remains that gambling laws will not change.
What the Province’s Position Means for Online Gambling in the Coming Policy Cycle
BC’s monopoly model is now being pressure-tested by the market forces it was designed to contain: a multi-billion-dollar offshore channel operating freely alongside PlayNow, capturing revenue the province can’t touch. Ontario’s open-market results have shown that liberalization doesn’t just redistribute existing spending; it expands the taxable base. With Alberta’s regulated launch set for 2026, BC’s next budget cycle and gaming-policy review will be the clearest signal yet of whether exclusivity remains viable or is quietly being reconsidered, making it a good moment to explore what BC’s licensed options currently look like.
