iGaming Ontario 2025 Q1 Betting & Casino Results Analysis

April 30, 2025

Given the current situation within the Canadian and Ontario economy, which is riddled with uncertainty, we could wait for iGaming Ontario to release their March 2025 results. iGO still adheres to a fiscal year that begins in April, since that's when they were launched, back in 2022. But with the new monthly data reporting format, we are able to look at and compare the segments that are of most interest to us to check on the health of the market.

Thus, once the March 2025 results were released, we wanted to examine the Q1 results of 2025 and compare them to those from 2024. To be precise, we mean calendar Q1 of January, February and March of 2025, versus those same three months of 2024.  In doing so, we can start to examine just how inelastic the demand is for online gambling products against the backdrop of economic uncertainty, which in this case, has come from American tariffs and threats to Canada's sovereignty. In other words, given these economic threats came in late 2024 and continued into Q1 2025, do we see a market that is growing, static, or contracting?

iGaming Ontario 2025 Q1 Sports Betting Handle and Revenue Versus 2024

As we've stated before, given our focus on sports betting and the cyclical, event-based nature of the sports calendar, it's always best to compare periods year-over-year, rather than month-to-month.  While calendar Q4 is more important for sports betting on a wagering volume basis, Q1 contains, of course, the NFL Playoffs and Super Bowl into February, where activity then sees a bit of a lull before March Madness boosts activity.

The Ontario sports betting results, at least in Q1, whereas the effects of the economic threats have yet to materialize in increased consumer prices or widespread job losses, indicate extremely strong growth in both the handle (total wagers) as well as the associated revenues. For the first three months of 2025, the total handle was $3.297 billion, 20.1% higher than the first three months of 2024. The sports betting revenue for this period increased by 23.6%, to $201.3 million from $162.9 million. One could perhaps argue that if Ontario was not under various threats from the US administration, these numbers could have been even higher, but the numbers are clear - to this point, with no new significant sportsbook operators, Ontario is still a growing market for online sports betting.

Sportsbook hold

For those interested in how successful Ontario bettors have been over these periods, we can calculate the overall "sportsbook hold" by dividing the revenue figure (right-most in Table 1) by the wagers figure. In Q1 2025, the sportsbook hold was 6.1%, a small increase from the 5.9% in the same quarter of 2024. For context, this makes Ontario sports bettors relatively "sharp." In comparison, over the same respective periods, the sportsbook hold in New Jersey was 8.2% and 7.9%. In other words, New Jersey sportsbooks keep about 33% more than they do in Ontario.

iGaming Ontario 2025 Q1 Online Casino Wagers and Revenue Versus 2024

Online casino activity in Ontario is clearly not set in the same cyclical calendar as sports betting, as indicated by the graph of casino wagers by month illustrated below. The growth has been steadily up and to the right with really what can only be described as incredible growth.

Was there perhaps a chink in the armour with a drop in wagers in February 2025? Not really, no. When we look at the January to February periods in 2023 and 2024, February activity always dips, before continuing to move higher. While economic and tariff uncertainty may have contributed on the margins to the 2025 dip, this historical pattern tells us the dip in activity probably has more to do with February simply having two or three fewer days than January.

2025 March results popped right back up to set a record with $6.603 billion in casino wagers. Table 2 shows that for the calendar first quarter of 2025, Ontario online casino wagers grew 31.0% to $19.179 billion and revenue grew 33.8% to $684.8 million over the results from Q1 in 2024.

With this kind of sustained growth at Ontario online casinos from market launch in 2022 through to 2025, it's no wonder that Bally's Canada and BetMGM have recently moved to launch casino-focused properties MonopolyCasino and Wheel of Fortune Casino, to complement their main iGaming properties in the province.

In conclusion, has the threat of Trump's tariffs dampened online betting & casino activity in Ontario?

We suppose at the margin, without the threat of tariffs, Ontario's online sports betting and casino activity could have been even higher. However, when we see such significant year-over-year growth in both verticals for the first three months of the year, we can only conclude that the inelastic demand for gambling products persists in Ontario, at least through this early period of uncertainty, as Canada and Ontario hope for the best, but perhaps wait for the worst. 

President Trump first threatened 25% tariffs on Canada on November 25, 2024, the day after his election win. Despite consistent escalation of economic threats through the first quarter of 2025 that would disproportionately affect Ontario's industries, the iGaming Ontario market figures and growth have shown no real signs of a slowdown. 

However, the fact remains that there is a significant lag effect in terms of when these tariff policies actually work their way into the economy and the hard data as expressed through things like GDP and unemployment rates. Given the almost unprecedented economic headwinds, iGaming Ontario can be forgiven if their epic growth rates finally flatten out, or even decline a little over the course of 2025 as we move from a period of fear and uncertainty into a period of actual economic contraction.

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