Four years ago, Ontario was trying to persuade players to leave offshore gambling sites behind. The latest figures suggest most of them already have.
The latest Ipsos findings show that regulated sites have become the preferred choice for Ontario players, with 91.1% reporting that they use licensed platforms. That's up from 83.7% a year earlier and a long way from the market that existed before Ontario launched its competitive framework in April 2022.
The numbers have attracted attention beyond Canada. Ontario was one of the first jurisdictions in North America to open a competitive online gaming market at this scale and other regions continue to watch how the province's approach is working in practice.
Ontario's Biggest Gaming Market Shift
For years, plenty of Ontario players used offshore gambling sites without giving it much thought. Those platforms were familiar, offered large game libraries and had already built audiences long before the regulated market arrived.
Back in 2022, Ontario estimated that roughly 70% of online gambling activity was taking place on unregulated websites. The latest Ipsos study paints a very different picture, with 91.1% of players now choosing regulated sites and only 8.9% sticking exclusively with unregulated options. Industry observers refer to this shift as channelization, a measure of how many players stay within the regulated market rather than using unlicensed alternatives.
Choice appears to be one of the biggest reasons behind the change. Someone looking for online casino games in Ontario no longer has to leave the regulated market to find variety. Readers interested in how that market operates can find information on licensing standards, player protections and the best ones in Ontario through Casino.org, an industry resource that covers online casinos and tracks gaming developments across Canada.
More Choice, More Competition
One detail that sometimes gets lost in discussions about regulation is how quickly Ontario's market expanded after launch. There are currently 44 licensed operators running 76 gaming websites across the province. That number would have seemed ambitious before the market opened. More operators mean more games, more features and far more choice than players had when the market first opened.
Ontario took a different route from some jurisdictions by allowing a broad range of operators to enter the market if they met the required standards. Rather than limiting participation, the province focused on creating a regulated environment where multiple companies could compete for the same audience. The result is a market that feels much closer to what players were already accustomed to elsewhere.
One recent example is BetGuard, a province-wide self-exclusion system introduced by iGaming Ontario. Instead of contacting multiple operators individually, users can exclude themselves from all participating licensed sites through a single platform.
The Market Has Grown Fast
A player logging into a legal gaming site today is stepping into a market that looks nothing like the one that launched in 2022.
Regulated operators handled CAD $82.7 billion in wagers during the 2024-25 fiscal year, while gross gaming revenue reached CAD $3.2 billion. iGaming Ontario also reported around 2.6 million active player accounts. Those figures help explain why Ontario's market attracts so much attention from industry observers. The province has built one of North America's largest regulated online gaming sectors in a relatively short period.
That does not happen automatically. Markets can open without successfully attracting players. Ontario's figures suggest participation has continued to grow rather than stalling after the initial launch period.
Why Ontario Is Becoming a Model for Others
Ontario's approach stands out because it focuses on competition rather than exclusivity. Instead of giving a small number of companies access to the market, the province created a framework where multiple operators could participate under the same rules. That gave players more choice and gave regulators a larger regulated market to oversee. The model has produced results that other jurisdictions are paying attention to, particularly when it comes to channelization.
Attention From Outside Canada
The 91.1% figure is not just another industry statistic. It represents a level of regulated participation that many jurisdictions would like to achieve.
When policymakers and regulators discuss online gaming, one of the recurring questions is whether players will actually move away from unregulated sites if legal alternatives become available. Ontario now offers one of the clearest examples of what that shift can look like. That helps explain why the province is regularly mentioned in conversations about online gaming regulation elsewhere.
Gaming Habits Are Changing Too
Ontario's numbers also reflect a broader shift in how Canadians spend their leisure time online. Statistics Canada reported that revenue generated by the country's video game industry grew from roughly $2 billion to $7 billion over a decade. During that same period, the number of Canadian video game companies more than doubled.
New game announcements continue to generate significant attention across the industry, with events such as Summer Game Fest helping drive excitement around upcoming releases and emerging trends in digital entertainment. Moving between gaming platforms, streaming services and other forms of online entertainment has become routine for many players.
A Market That Looks Very Different
When Ontario launched its regulated market in 2022, there was no guarantee that players would abandon offshore platforms in large numbers.
Four years ago, the province estimated that most online gambling activity was happening outside the regulated market. Today, more than nine out of ten players are using licensed sites instead. It bears little resemblance to the market Ontario inherited in 2022.
