Ontario Players Bet C$9.48 Billion in May as Online Casino Takes 88% of the Market

Ontario's regulated online gambling market handled C$9.478 billion (about US$6.9 billion) in cash wagers during May 2026, its fourth-highest monthly total since the market opened in April 2022, according to data iGaming Ontario (iGO) released on June 25. Online casino did the heavy lifting again, taking 88% of all bets and 79% of operator revenue, a split that has held for more than a year and that is reshaping how the largest US-listed operators run their Canadian businesses.

The month's handle sat 2% above April and just shy of the all-time record of C$9.592 billion set in March. Non-adjusted gross gaming revenue, the amount operators keep after paying out winnings, reached C$413.1 million (about US$301 million), the second-best month ever behind December's C$425.6 million. Player accounts held roughly flat: 1.257 million active accounts, down 1% from April, spending an average of C$329 each, up 3%. A market this far into its run is no longer growing on new sign-ups. It is growing on how much existing players bet.

Casino is the whole story, and operators have noticed

The vertical breakdown is lopsided and getting more so. Casino games produced C$8.371 billion in wagers, an 88% share and a 3% monthly gain. Sports betting drew C$972 million for a 10% share, but fell 7% from April, a softness that echoes the sports betting handle slowdown in Massachusetts. Peer-to-peer poker remains a rounding error at C$134 million. On the revenue side casino kept C$326.4 million while sports betting held C$81.3 million, meaning Ontario's headline product by public profile, sports wagering, now generates one dollar for every four the slots and tables bring in.

That mix is why FanDuel and DraftKings have spun up standalone casino apps in the province, separating slots and live dealer from their sportsbook brands rather than burying them inside a betting app. Ontario now counts 45 licensed operators running 79 gaming sites, down from the 49 operators and 84 sites reported for the full FY2024-25 year, a sign the market is consolidating around the brands that can fund player acquisition. For affiliates, the read is plain: Ontario traffic monetizes on casino intent, not bet-slip intent, and the revenue-share math follows the C$8.4 billion that flows through slots and tables every month, not the shrinking sportsbook handle. Our Alberta launch coverage flagged the same casino-first pattern operators expect to repeat next door.

Channelization keeps climbing, and a second province is days away

The other number iGO wants noticed is channelization, the share of online gambling that happens on licensed sites. A study from iGO and the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario found 91.1% of surveyed online gamblers used regulated sites in May, up 7.4 points from 83.7% a year earlier. Cumulative operator revenue since the 2022 launch has now passed C$10 billion. That climb is the policy case Ontario sells to other jurisdictions: open a competitive licensed market and grey-market play shrinks toward single digits.

The timing matters because the comparison set is about to change. Ontario spent four years as the only competitive iGaming market in Canada. On July 13, 2026, Alberta opens its own under the iGaming Alberta Act, with 28 approved operators at launch including FanDuel, DraftKings, BetMGM, BetRivers, Caesars, and the government's PlayAlberta. Alberta is running the same conduct-and-manage structure Ontario built, with the Alberta iGaming Corporation mirroring iGO and the AGLC mirroring the AGCO as regulator. The operators that dominate Ontario's casino tables are the same names heading west, and Alberta's roughly 3.5 million adults give a sense of the smaller pool they are chasing against Ontario's eligible population near 12 million.

Ontario's trajectory frames what Alberta can expect, and how long it takes. Year one of the Ontario market, ending March 2023, produced C$1.4 billion in revenue. FY2024-25 closed at C$82.7 billion in handle and more than C$3.2 billion in GGR, up 31% and 33.7% respectively, with online casino alone accounting for C$69.6 billion of that handle. Three years took the market from launch to C$9 billion months. Alberta starts from zero in July with a population a quarter of Ontario's, so its early monthly totals will land well below these figures even if channelization climbs as fast. The pattern playing out across North America, from the Maine online casino launch to the iGaming bills moving in New York, is that casino, rather than sports betting, is where the regulated dollars concentrate once a market matures, exactly what Ontario's May numbers show.

The next dated checkpoint is iGO's June report, due in late July, which will show whether Ontario holds near C$9 billion through the summer slowdown and whether the run rate stays on track to top the prior fiscal year's C$82.7 billion in wagers.