Ontario’s iGaming experiment has become a gambling heavyweight
The Ontario iGaming market exploded almost immediately once it opened in April 2022. During its first year, Ontario’s regulated operators accepted more than $35.5 billion in wagers and generated approximately $1.4 billion in gaming revenue, with 46 operators and more than 70 betting sites participating by the end of the fiscal year. By the end of the market’s second year, iGO had more than 49 operators, over $63.3 billion in cumulative wagers and $2.2 billion in gaming revenue.
The market has continued expanding rather than simply settling into a mature plateau. iGO’s latest research found that 91.1% of Ontarians who gamble online reported using regulated sites, up from 83.7% a year earlier. That is arguably more important than any single monthly revenue record because it suggests Ontario has increasingly succeeded at its original objective of shifting consumers into the regulated ecosystem.
And then Alberta arrived. On July 13, Alberta became the second Canadian province to open its online gambling market to private operators, launching with 22 approved consumer-facing sites. The province estimated that roughly 70% of online gambling activity had previously occurred through unregulated offshore operators. Suddenly, Ontario was no longer the entire Canadian story. But July’s numbers show that it remains the country’s benchmark.
$9.88 billion in wagers is only part of the story
The headline figure is enormous, but the composition of that $9.88 billion is even more revealing. Online casino accounted for $8.78 billion, or approximately 89% of all wagers, making it overwhelmingly responsible for the record month. Casino wagering was up roughly 30% year over year and comfortably surpassed the previous record of $8.37 billion set in May. Casino revenue also established a new record at $330.4 million, up around 31% from July 2025 and representing about 80% of total market revenue.
Sports betting contributed another $992 million in wagers and $77.8 million in revenue. While sports wagering fell below the $1 billion mark during the summer slowdown, July’s handle was still approximately 44% higher than the same month last year. Soccer betting on the 2026 FIFA World Cup likely played a role, particularly given Canada’s participation in the tournament. Poker, meanwhile, remained a much smaller piece of the puzzle, generating roughly $116 million in wagers and $5.3 million in revenue.
Overall, operators generated approximately $413.6 million in gross gaming revenue, the second-highest monthly total ever behind December 2025. That represented a 33% year-over-year increase.
However, the player numbers may be the most important metric of all. Approximately 1.365 million active player accounts were recorded in July, up from 948,000 in July 2025 and about 3.5% from June. That means Ontario isn’t simply squeezing more wagers out of the same group of customers. The market is still adding substantial numbers of active accounts.
What the July record really means
There is an important distinction between wagering volume and actual consumer spending. Casino wagers can be recycled repeatedly. A player can deposit $100, lose $20, win $50, wager that $50 again and generate hundreds of dollars in handle without ever putting hundreds of new dollars into the market. That makes the 31% increase in handle less dramatic than it initially appears. But the simultaneous growth in revenue and active accounts makes the July performance considerably harder to dismiss as simply more money being churned through casino games.
The market is getting bigger on multiple fronts. For operators, that should reinforce Ontario’s status as one of North America’s most attractive regulated online gambling markets. For the provincial government, it means a rapidly expanding source of tax revenue. And for consumers, it means more competition, more product choice and increasingly sophisticated online gambling ecosystems.
