Home to Canada’s only professional NBA and MLB teams, Ontario is a hotbed of sports action in Canada. With the recent legalization of gambling in April 2022, we are seeing it become one of the leading places for sports betting in Canada. Online platforms are growing in numbers, and sites such as time2play.com/ca-en/betting/ are making it easier for Canadians to get involved in the action. These review sites do the heavy lifting for bettors, allowing us to explore which site is most suitable for our betting needs. We can only expect the demand for online gaming to increase in Ontario, especially in the iGaming arena.
With a population of over 14 million people, Ontario is ripe for online sports betting activity. It is the fifth largest state in the United States and carries the potential for a large number of prospective gamblers. With a wide variety of domestic sports available in Canada, as well as their two professional American NBA and MLB teams, the number and variety of teams provides a wide swath of available sports for new gamblers to bet on.
Here are 5 things you need to know about sports betting in Ontario:
- Gambling has been legal in Ontario for over two years now and has already proved itself profitable, with over $2 billion dollars in profit reported by official outlets and operators. Since online gambling is still in its infancy in Ontario, the sky’s the limit for what this new market can become. Ontario is already one of the largest iGaming jurisdictions in North America, and it has the population and interest to drive those numbers higher in the years to come.
- In the United States, you can gamble from the age of 18. This is slightly different in certain areas of Canada, such as Ontario, where at the moment, the legal gambling age is 19. In other Canadian provinces, you are allowed to gamble legally from the age of 18. Regardless, the one-year difference doesn’t seem to have much effect in dissuading people in Ontario from legally gambling online, and with over 2,100 online casinos throughout Canada, the growth doesn’t seem to be slowing down.
- Ontario has the best selection of sportsbooks in Canada, with 29 licensed online sportsbooks and likely many more to be added in the future. You can also bet legally in person in Ontario, although the number of people betting online has increased exponentially the past two years. Over 60% of all Canadians have reported having spent some money on gambling since it has become legal and available, with a larger percentage of the gambling public being those of at least 35 years of age and older.
- If you are wanting to bet on your home team in Ontario, it would be best to do some research on those teams and the leagues. The CFL (Canadian Football League) was founded in 1909 but has gone through many iterations to become what it is that we know now. The Toronto Varsity Blues won the very first title in 1909, and the Toronto Argonauts have also won the most current CFL titles, with a staggering 18 overall. They last won in 2022, as you can see from their gaudy championship ring. The Argonauts are a good choice to follow if you are looking for a CFL betting favorite.
- Ontario also has two prestigious American sports teams: the Toronto Blue Jays and Toronto Raptors, of Major League Baseball and the National Basketball Association, respectively. The Raptors became an NBA expansion team in 1995 and won their first and only NBA championship in 2019. Led by future Hall of Famer Kawhi Leonard, they defeated the Golden State Warriors dynasty. In fact, the ratings for Game 4 of the NBA Finals were larger than the Super Bowl in Canada, and it was the top NBA broadcast in Canadian history.
The Toronto Blue Jays became an MLB expansion team in 1977 and won their only two World Series championships back to back, in 1992 and 1993. The Blue Jays have had their share of great baseball players throughout the years, such as Roy Halladay, Carlos Delgado, Roberto Alomar, John Olerud, Joe Carter and Dave Stieb, among many more! It has been over 30 years since Joe Carter’s iconic walk-off home run in the World series, but the outlook is positive in Toronto with their litany of young stars!
As more and more people participate in online gaming in Ontario, the future’s looking bright – and with many historic teams and leagues, there’s no shortage of sports and events to place your bets on.