.svg)
A senator’s efforts to establish a national framework for regulating the advertising of online gaming, including sports betting, was opposed on Tuesday (October 1) by the chief executive of the Canadian Gaming Association (CGA), who urged lawmakers to instead support a fully regulated industry.
“I don’t believe S-269 is necessary, as most of what the bill aims to do is currently in place,” Paul Burns, president and CEO of the CGA, told the Senate Transport and Communications Committee during a two-hour hearing on a pending bill to establish nationally binding limits on sports-betting ads.
The legislation would specifically require the federal government in Ottawa to set limits on advertising and set national standards for preventing problem gambling.
Sponsored by Ontario Senator Marty Deacon and introduced in June 2023, also proposes to extend the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario’s (AGCO) ban on celebrities and athletes appearing in ads for gambling sites across the country.
When Ontario became the first province to fully license and regulate online gaming and sports betting through a competitive regime in April 2022, Burns said professional sports leagues and their broadcast partners became active stakeholders developing policies on how wagering on their games could interact with their product.
“Each league has placed restrictions and limits on advertising … both in-venue and on-broadcast,” he added. “There’s been a lot of emotional discussion about gambling advertising over the last couple of years because people have seen a lot more of it.”
Burns told senators there had been an absence of facts, data and understanding of the evolution of Canada’s gambling marketplace over the long term and that was why Ontario creating a regulated market was needed.
Ontario regulations include more than 20 measures related to gambling advertising, Burns said, including overarching rules that advertising and marketing materials should not target high-risk populations, underage youth or self-excluded persons.
“Players must opt in to receive promotional emails. There is a prohibition on mass market advertising or bonusing incentives. We’re looking forward soon to the creation of a province-wide, centralized self-exclusion for all Ontarians, regardless of where you chose to gamble,” he said.
Burns said the Ontario regulatory model has brought in more than 85 percent of unregulated online play into the regulated market within two years.
“Provinces have the tools and are in the best position to regulate,” Burns told the Senate committee. “Additional layer of federal regulation is not required.”
Canada legalized singe-event sports betting in 2021, and the shift to legalization has led to an overload of gambling-related advertising, with a CBC investigation and accompanying academic studying earlier this year finding gambling advertisements, on average, accounted for 21 percent of each sports-event broadcast.
That overwhelming amount of advertisements was one of the factors that prompted Deacon to introduce S-269.
Catherine MacLeod, president of CEO of thinktv, said gambling advertising represented a small proportion of the overall advertising they review.
In 2022, thinktv reviewed 442 online gambling ads, dropping to 299 in 2023, and as of last week, MacLeod said of the 28,000 video advertisements reviewed so far in 2024, 189 of them are related to online gambling.
“We are forecasting ending the year with 60 fewer ads than we reviewed in 2023, which follows the typical pattern for new product launches in television advertising,” she added. “Our team of analysts review each piece of gambling related content, assessing it against the [Canadian] broadcast codes, the register standards and other legal and regulatory requirement.”
MacLeod urged the committee to consider the unique aspects of the Canadian market and base “any future changes” on the Ontario regulatory model.
Deacon acknowledged Burns opposition to S-269 but asked the veteran industry lobbyist to explain what was missing from gambling regulation in Canada. Burns responded that there was potentially a need for coordinated problem gambling research across the country.
“We as an industry would love to see more,” Burns said. “We learn from evidence-based research. It gives us tools to better protect players.”
The Senate committee has so far held five hearings on S-269 since June 3.
On Wednesday, the 11-member committee will go clause-by-clause through the eight-page bill, giving members a last chance to propose amendments before deciding whether to send the bill to the full Senate for their consideration.
Julie-Miville Dechene, a senator from Quebec and deputy committee chair, was surprised Burns called their organization the CGA, as he spoke Wednesday only about Ontario’s regulated market.
“We have ten provinces,” Dechene said. “Are there some issues out there, or is Ontario the only one” with a regulated market? she asked,
Burns reminded Dechene that Ontario was the only province that has chosen to fully regulate its gaming market via a competitive framework, rather than maintain a government-run monopoly for online gambling as in Quebec.
“They regulate themselves,” he said. “Loto-Quebec is the operator of all gaming products in the province of Quebec. Every province is a bit different. What they’ve chosen to do is leave the online space that’s out there unregulated. So those sites don’t have age verification. You can actually put your email address up, make a deposit and start playing."
Burns reminded lawmakers that the CGA has been asking for decade to fully regulate because gambling in Canada was built out of a provincial monopoly model where every province could control what went on in their province from a land-based perspective.
“And guess what? The internet was the greatest disrupter for our industry and dozens of others. You need to respond,” Burns added.
