Canada needs a national strategy to monitor gambling-related harms and control the deluge of advertisements that followed Ontario’s legalization of commercial online gambling and sports betting, according to a new report from the group that wrote the country’s alcohol guidelines.

The Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction published a call to action on Tuesday urging political leaders to treat gambling websites and other betting venues more like alcohol, tobacco and marijuana.

“These are not ordinary commodities,” said Pam Kent, director of research and emerging trends at the CCSA. “They all can lead to harms. They all have addictive properties. They all have to be regulated and they all actually require national strategies.”

The CCSA argued that Canada should have higher standards governing the promotion and availability of gambling, as well as a system to track harms such as gambling-related bankruptcies and suicides. The report also called for more funding to warn the public about the risks of problem gambling and to provide treatment to those who’ve become ruinously addicted.

Matthew Young, a senior research associate at the CCSA, said gambling, like many aspects of modern life, has been irrevocably changed by the smartphone. Gamblers now carry slot machines and electronic sports bookies around in their pockets.

“One of the fundamental differences in the new gambling environment is that you can play in the palm of your hand on your phone 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” said Dr. Young, also the chief research officer at Greo Evidence Insights, a not-for-profit research organization with expertise in gambling, and co-author of the new report. “It’s difficult to restrict this. This is something new that the world hasn’t really experienced before.”

Got questions about Ontario’s online gambling industry? Don’t bet on getting the answers

Ontario must fold on glitzy gambling ads

On top of technological changes, the federal and Ontario governments made significant policy changes in recent years to legalize online gambling and sports betting, activities that used to be relegated to an unregulated grey market.

In 2021, Ottawa passed a law giving provinces and territories the discretion to allow single-event sports betting. Most provinces responded by offering online sports wagering through their own Crown corporations, but Ontario opted in April, 2022, to open its market to private corporations running online casinos and sports books.

As of December, 49 gambling companies were operating 72 gambling websites in Ontario alone, the CCSA report says. Just over $35-billion was wagered on websites registered in Ontario in 2022-23, predominantly through online slots and table games. By the year after, that total had nearly doubled to $63-billion, according to iGaming Ontario, which oversees the commercial online gambling market.

There has been scant formal tracking of how that increase in online gambling has affected rates of problem gambling, Dr. Young said.

One exception cited in the CCSA report is a study published in the Journal of Gambling Studies that examined the types of calls coming into Ontario’s problem gambling helpline. That research found that in the nine months before April, 2022 – the month when Ontario legalized private gambling websites with heavy advertising – the helpline received an average of 29 calls a month from people struggling with online gambling. The monthly average rose to 93 calls in the year after Ontario’s changes.

Number of calls received on Ontario’s

problem gambling helpline

By game type

Electronic gambling machines

Ontario legalizes commercial online gambling and sports betting

THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: TURNER, N.E., SINCLAIR, L. & MATHESON, F.I. BRIEF REPORT: THE RISE OF ONLINE BETTING IN ONTARIO. JOURNAL OF GAMBLING STUDIES (2023)

Number of calls received on Ontario’s

problem gambling helpline

By game type

Electronic gambling machines

Ontario legalizes commercial online gambling and sports betting

THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: TURNER, N.E., SINCLAIR, L. & MATHESON, F.I. BRIEF REPORT: THE RISE OF ONLINE BETTING IN ONTARIO. JOURNAL OF GAMBLING STUDIES (2023)

Number of calls received on Ontario’s problem gambling helpline

By game type

Ontario legalizes commercial online gambling and sports betting

Electronic gambling machines

THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: TURNER, N.E., SINCLAIR, L. & MATHESON, F.I. BRIEF REPORT: THE RISE OF ONLINE BETTING IN ONTARIO. JOURNAL OF GAMBLING STUDIES (2023)

“It’s a dramatic shift,” said Nigel Turner, one of the study’s authors and a gambling researcher at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto. “It started skyrocketing when the wide-open licensing of commercial venues for online gambling occurred” in Ontario.

The CCSA report advocates for consistent national rules governing gambling advertising, despite provinces generally having policies of their own. In Ontario, for example, the Alcohol and Gaming Commission in February banned athletes and celebrities from appearing in ads promoting online betting, primarily to protect children. (They can, however, deliver responsible-gambling messages in ads.)

Even without famous pitchmen, glitzy gambling ads from Ontario aired during live sporting events still reach children and people living outside the province, said Luke Clark, director of the Centre for Gambling Research at the University of British Columbia.

He endorsed the CCSA’s call for a national strategy, saying that bettors who lose large sums of money can suffer long-lasting harms, and those harms extend to their families.

“When they stop gambling those debts do not disappear like a hangover,” he said. “They carry those debts with them for many years after they stop gambling.”