Ontario iCasinos Outpacing Sports Betting by nearly 6 to 1

Ontario Handles $14B in Online Gambling Wagers

According to the report, Ontario’s iGaming market took in $14 billion in wagers across all verticals. These are actual monetary bets and do not include any wagers made with bonus or promotional credits (of which there were surely many). I repeat; $14,000,000,000.00 in cash wagers on casino games, sports bets, poker, and bingo games.

That’s a lot of zeroes, right? But that’s not the ironic part.

The irony is that the Canadian Gambling Association (CGA) spent years advocating for legal iGaming and single-event sports betting in Canada. In doing so, its president, Paul Burns, estimated time and again that Canadians were “wagering approximately $14 billion annually” through offshore gaming sites. Now, we find Ontarians alone are betting $14 billion on locally regulated iGaming sites in just three months’ time.

Okay, that’s enough retrospect. Back to the report…

Online Casino Takes the Cake (Most of the Icing Too)

One of the more interesting aspects of the report is the breakdown of wagers by gambling vertical. Ontario’s most prominent markets are online casinos, online sportsbooks, and online poker rooms – in that order.

Of the $14b in total wagers, $11.6b of that went to casino games, $2b to sports betting, and about $350m to poker.

Breaking that down into percentiles, we find that online casino games – these include slot machines, RNG and live dealer table games, video poker, as well as bingo – is accounting for 83% of total revenue. On the sports betting side – inclusive of sports, esports, DFS, props, and novelties – that $2b equals 14% of all bets. P2P poker games – Texas Hold’em, Omaha, etc. – make up the smallest portion at 3%.

For the most astute bettors, an even more intriguing number is the amount of revenue Ontario is collecting from each vertical. Let’s have a look, then I’ll explain why this information is so important.

The province’s Q1 Fy23-24 haul – the amount Ontario keeps – was $454 million, or 3.24% of the total intake. Breaking that down, we see casino games bringing in $392m (72%) in revenue. Sports earned the province $138m (25%), and poker $15m (%3).

The takeaway: Casino games account for nearly 5/6 of wagers, but only 3/4 of revenue. Likewise, sports bets account for just 15% of wagers, but 25% of intake. 

What this Means for Ontario’s Gamblers

Avid gamblers are always looking for an edge; a way to win more and lose less. When we compare these numbers, we find that Ontario’s online casinos are paying back more to players than sportsbooks. If we look at this from an RTP perspective – the gambler’s oh-so-important Return to Player – we can surmise that:

Ontario casinos have a 96.76% RTP (or 3.24% house edge). In contrast, Ontario sportsbooks are dishing out a 93.1% RTP (6.9% house edge). When you observe the market from this standpoint, those online casino games start to look a lot more enticing. Or, we could surmise that Ontario’s sports betting community lacks a good balance of successful handicappers.

Q1 2023-24 vs. Fiscal Year 1

In order to get any real perspective on how much Ontario’s iGaming market is growing, we must compare the first fiscal year (FY22-23) to the latest quarter Q1-FY23-24. The following chart details the wagers and revenue for both.

When we calculate the growth rate, the results are exceptional. We do this by dividing the FY22-23 results by four to get an average quarter result for all four quarters. Then we calculate the percent growth rate from the average quarter last year to this year’s single quarter. Growing more than 50% in a single year is incredible, and proves one notable fact. Ontario’s iGaming market is far from saturated.

At present, there are 75 operators accepting all manner of online gambling wagers in Ontario. That’s up from just 18 operators on opening day, April 4, 2022. It’s easy to assume that this number is far higher than a single province can reasonably support. But we all know what they say about assumptions… I think the evidence is pretty clear that Ontario and its 14.5 million populace are living up to its potential.