Ontario always had a long history of support for single-game sports betting and has been regarded as a potential gold mine for sports betting in Canada. Then, each province will need to determine how to incorporate sports betting into their existing gambling infrastructure this means that provinces will add single-game betting to their existing provincial-run online sportsbooks. First, specific bills legalizing sports betting will need to pass in each regional legislature.

Now, the rest is up to each individual provincial government. While Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was initially expected to set that date for late 2021, it was announced that legal sports betting would launch in Canada on August 27. Then, the Prime Minister must set a date for the law to go into effect. When Parliament passes a law, it must receive approval, called Royal Assent, from Canada’s Governor General, the appointed (and largely ceremonial) representative of the Queen. Date of implementationįor some time during the summer, ambiguity existed regarding when the law would go into effect. On that day, sports bettors and fans throughout Canada rejoiced.

Although there was concern that the bill would not be passed before Parliament’s summer recess (or before the announcement of a snap election, which was already rumored), C-218 finally passed Parliament on June 23. The bill passed the House of Commons in February but languished in the Senate for months. Since sports betting enjoys broad support throughout Canada, this would naturally mean that single-game wagering would be launched in most, if not all, of the provinces. The bill was deceptively simple: it would alter the national criminal code to allow provinces to legalize single-game sports betting (the only exception being for horse racing). PointsBet was among the first operators to launch their app and website up North, followed shortly after by FanDuel and theScore Bet. The campaign to legalize sports betting in Canada reached a head in 2021, when a game-changing bill known as C-218 was introduced in Parliament. Since most of Canada’s most popular sports teams belong to U.S.-based leagues, it only makes sense that this upsurge in popularity would ripple across the border. There have been efforts to legalize single-game wagering in Canada for years, but it wasn’t until 2021 that these efforts started picking up steam in a big way.Īfter the United States Supreme Court overturned PASPA, the federal prohibition on sports betting in 2018, many, including professional sports leagues themselves, embraced wagering on sports after opposing it for many years. The path to legal sports betting in Canada

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