Four years after launch, Ontario’s regulated iGaming market is posting some of its biggest numbers yet, with April revenue the third-highest on record and up almost 30 percent in a year, even as the money rolls in mainly from online casino and the conversation about harm grows louder.
- Ontario operators took in $405.4 million in gross gaming revenue in April, the third-highest month on record and up 29 percent from a year earlier, on $9.31 billion in wagers.
- The market set fresh records elsewhere too, with a $9.59 billion handle in March, an all-time high, and $27.8 billion wagered in the first quarter of 2026.
- Online casino does the heavy lifting, at about 87 percent of wagers and 77 percent of revenue, which leaves sports betting a smaller but higher-margin slice.
- Four years in, online gambling in Ontario is approaching $100 billion in annual wagers and is on pace for roughly $5 billion in yearly operator revenue.
- The growth has pushed player protection into a new phase, with centralized self-exclusion, deposit limits for younger players and a fresh push to rein in advertising.
TORONTO – Ontario’s regulated online gambling market is having a banner year, and the latest monthly numbers underline both how big it has become and where the money actually comes from. Operators reported $405.4 million in gross gaming revenue in April, the third-highest monthly total in the market’s history and a 29 percent jump from the same month a year earlier. It is the kind of figure that would have looked fanciful when the market opened four years ago.
April was not a clean record on its own. It followed an all-time high in March and slipped slightly from there. But the direction is unmistakable, and the milestones are stacking up.
The Numbers Behind the Record Run
Start with the headline. April’s $405.4 million in revenue trailed only December 2025 and November 2025, and it arrived on $9.31 billion in total wagers. That handle was down about 3 percent from March, which industry watchers attributed to the usual lull after March Madness, but up roughly 20 percent from April 2025. Revenue per active account reached $321 for the month, up almost 12 percent year over year, across about 1.27 million active accounts.
The records sit just behind. March produced the largest single month of wagering in Ontario’s history at $9.59 billion, edging the $9.52 billion set in January, while December 2025 holds the revenue peak at about $425 million. Zoom out and the scale is clearer still: Ontarians wagered $27.8 billion in the first quarter of 2026 alone, and across the 2025 calendar year they bet about $98.3 billion while operators kept roughly $4 billion, up 26 and 34 percent. Since the market opened, operators have taken in more than $10 billion in revenue, which at the province’s 20 percent share works out to about $2 billion for Ontario. On that trajectory, online gambling in Ontario is closing in on $100 billion in annual wagers and is tracking toward something near $5 billion in yearly operator revenue.
A Casino Market With a Sportsbook Attached
The single most important fact about Ontario’s market is buried under the totals. This is a casino story. Online casino games accounted for about 87 percent of the money wagered in April and 77 percent of the revenue, because slots and live tables recycle a player’s bankroll over and over at a thin operator margin. Sports betting is the mirror image: it made up only about 11 percent of the handle but 21 percent of the revenue, since a bet settles once and the book keeps a larger slice of each dollar. Peer-to-peer poker remains a small third pillar at roughly 1 percent of the market. The practical takeaway is that the gaudy handle figure is mostly a casino number, while the revenue mix leans more toward betting than the wagering totals suggest. Anyone reading Canada sportsbooks data as the core of the Ontario boom is reading the wrong line.
How Ontario Got Here
When the province opened its commercial market on April 4, 2022, it was the first open, competitive iGaming framework in North America, and the bet was straightforward: pull players off offshore sites by licensing and taxing private operators rather than trying to ban them. By most measures it worked. Estimates put the grey market at around 70 percent of play before launch, and an independent study commissioned by iGaming Ontario and the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario found 83.7 percent of online gamblers were sticking to regulated sites by the third year. The market now runs through roughly 45 to 50 operators offering more than 80 gaming sites, with regular churn as brands launch, merge or quietly leave. Operators keep 80 percent of their revenue and remit the other 20 percent to the province.
The Other Side of the Ledger
Record revenue has a flip side, which is that record revenue means record losses for players, and that has moved the policy conversation from commentary into action. BetGuard, the province’s first centralized self-exclusion tool, went live May 14, letting any Ontario adult block themselves from every licensed site through a single portal for six months to five years, with no option to cancel early. In early June, OLG began requiring some of its youngest online players to set deposit limits. And researchers have flagged a sharp rise in young men contacting the ConnexOntario helpline for gambling problems since 2022. Advertising is the next battleground. A private member’s bill to ban online gambling ads was voted down by the governing Progressive Conservatives, but the minister responsible has said he is weighing new restrictions and called problem gambling a growing problem, worries amplified by the wall of betting promotion around the World Cup.
What Comes Next
Two things will shape the rest of 2026. Alberta opens its own private, competitive market on July 13 using the same model, and Ontario’s casino-heavy revenue mix is the clearest preview of where Alberta is likely to land once it matures. Meanwhile, a separate and unresolved fight over whether Ontario can pool players with markets outside the country is before the Supreme Court of Canada. For now, the story in the numbers is simple. The market keeps growing, the growth is mostly casino, and the harder questions are about what that growth costs.
