Ontario is unquestionably where iGaming made its first pit stop in Canada. The online casino revenue for 2025 was pegged at a little over $3 billion across the province. In fact, iGaming Ontario (iGO) reported that a little shy of $10 billion was plunked down at online casinos and sportsbooks this March alone.
iGaming revenue in Ontario has pointed one way, and that’s up. Over 40% from 2024 and more than 92% from when the regulated online casino market went live in the province.
Ontario is only four years into commercial iGaming, and it has gone above and beyond what gambling experts expected. So, how did the province become the hotbed of the regulated online casino economy in Canada?
The road to online casino regulation in Ontario
Before April 2022, online gambling in Ontario was a legal grey area. It wasn’t explicitly banned, but it wasn’t formally permitted either. The result? Ontarians were wagering an estimated $1 billion a year on offshore, unregulated sites, many of them unaware that these platforms had no consumer protections in place.
There was no way to hold these offshore sites to any standard. No self-exclusion tools, no fair gaming audits, no complaint channels. Players had next to no recourse when things went sideways. That was a problem for Ontarians and for the province.
The Ontario government moved to fix this through the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO). The plan was to build a regulated, open-market iGaming system that could pull players away from offshore sites and into a safer, legal environment. On April 4, 2022, that plan went live.
The iGaming model that actually works
Where Ontario did a bang-up job, better than every other province, was the decision to do a lot more than regulate iGaming. They opened the market to private operators rather than funneling everything through a single government-run platform.
The result was immediate. Dozens of licensed operators entered in the first year alone. By the end of fiscal 2024–25, 50 operators were running over 80 regulated gaming sites in the province. Ontario became one of the most competitive online casino markets in North America, and they did it all without putting oversight on the back burner.
The role of iGaming Ontario and AGCO
The Ontario iGaming framework runs on a dual structure. AGCO is the regulator, responsible for licensing, compliance, and enforcement. iGaming Ontario is the commercial entity responsible for conducting and managing the regulated market and maintaining operating agreements with licensed operators.
In 2024, iGO also became a fully independent Crown agency, no longer a subsidiary of AGCO. That provided it with greater governance clarity and a stronger mandate, including a statutory purpose to promote economic development in the province. It also developed a centralized self-exclusion system, set to launch in 2025–26, which will be the first of its kind in North America.
The growth of iGaming revenue
In fiscal 2024–25, Ontarians wagered $82.7 billion on licensed iGaming sites. That generated $2.9 billion in total gaming revenue, a 32% jump from the year before. Online casinos led the pack, pulling in $2.2 billion of that total. Sports betting added $654 million, while poker contributed $59 million.
March 2026 set a new all-time monthly record, with Ontarians placing $9.59 billion in wagers on licensed sites in a single month. Revenue for that month climbed 30% year-over-year. The province has also collected over $226 million in iGaming tax revenue in the first quarter of 2026 alone.
Beyond the gambling numbers, a Deloitte report commissioned by iGO found that the second full year of the regulated market contributed roughly 15,000 jobs and added approximately $2.7 billion to Ontario’s GDP. And that was just year two.
Competition is the name of the game in Ontario’s iGaming market
One of the biggest reasons Ontario’s market took off the way it did was competition. With dozens of licensed operators fighting for the same pool of players, the pressure was on to deliver a better product. Operators compete on game variety, mobile performance, and payment speed, with promotions and fancy bells & whistles right in the mix.
That competition necessitated the tick-up in live dealer studios, localized casino games, and faster withdrawal options. Things that were hit-or-miss on offshore platforms. Casino games (read: slots and live table games) accounted for 84% of all wagers in 2024–25 and continue to be the backbone of Ontario’s iGaming economy.
Sports betting drew the headlines at launch, but it’s the online casinos that do the heavy lifting, month in and month out.
Cutting off the black market and offshore operators
One of iGO’s stated goals from day one was channelization. That’s another way of saying to get as many Ontario players as possible off the black market and onto licensed platforms. Four years in, and the payoff is there to see.
A joint survey by AGCO and iGO found that 83.7% of Ontarians reported using a regulated site in early 2025. That’s up from virtually nothing before the market launched.
The offshore market still exists, and it likely always will to some degree. But Ontario has put a serious dent in it by making the regulated alternative more appealing, not just safer on paper.
Wrapping up – Ontario’s iGaming playbook for other Canadian provinces
However you look at it, Ontario has put together a 360-degree iGaming blueprint that other states and provinces can borrow. They have a laundry list of good lessons for others. Their restrictions on gambling ads, for instance, are something that the rest of Canada can put in place from the get-go when they launch their iGaming markets.
The same goes for the revenue-sharing formula and player protection. Ontario placed AGCO smack dab in the middle of everything, with help lines, self-exclusion, and other player safety tools you can find out more in this source. Casino Guru offers reliable source of regulated and safe casinos, tested by experts. Other provinces can also learn how to do iGaming marketing transparency right from Ontario.
