Nearly 130,000 Ontarians now show signs of problem gambling, up from roughly 43,000 in 2018, according to a CBC News investigation drawing on an Alberta Gambling Research Institute estimate. The analysis found Ontario’s problem-gambling rate had risen by 0.5 percentage points, based on the Problem Gambling Severity Index and Statistics Canada’s 2025 Canadian Community Health Survey.
The increase followed Ontario’s 2022 opening of private online casino and sports-betting operations. Carrie Shaw told CBC that the province’s problem-gambling count rose within six months of the market opening, while it fell elsewhere in Canada.
The Office of the Chief Coroner of Ontario also recorded a sharp change in gambling-related suicides. Ontario had averaged five such deaths annually between 2016 and 2021, before the private-market expansion, and the number tripled after 2022. The available data show the increases occurred alongside wider access to gambling and substantially greater advertising, rather than establishing that the market change alone caused them.
Ontario opened the market after single-event sports betting was legalized in 2021. By December 2023, 49 companies were operating 72 gambling websites in the province, according to the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction. The group found that expanded legal gambling opportunities and advertising were associated with greater gambling participation and harm, while systematic monitoring of harms was absent.
Online play removes many of the physical barriers associated with land-based gambling because it can be accessed by phone or computer at any hour. Shaw said gambling had become normalized in Ontario through access and advertising.
Independent helpline research has identified a similar pattern. A study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal found that the monthly rate of gambling-related ConnexOntario contacts rose from 13.4 per million people aged 15 and older before PlayOLG to 26.2 after the 2022 private-market expansion, a 95.5% relative increase. From April 2022 through September 2025, 76% of gambling-related contacts concerned online gambling, and 68.2% of all gambling-related contacts in the study were from men.
The researchers concluded that both the introduction of online gambling and later privatization alongside single-event sports betting were associated with substantial rises in gambling-related help-seeking. An earlier Ontario helpline study found online-gambling calls rose from an average of 29 a month before the private-market launch to nearly 93 afterward, but cautioned that it could not separate the effects of expanded legal access from those of heavy marketing because they occurred at the same time.
The findings add to evidence of rising gambling-related harm in Ontario, as we reported Oct. 6, when a separate study found emergency-department visits involving gambling disorder were 99% above expected levels by the second quarter of 2025.
The Ontario government said it has spent $421 million on responsible-gambling education, research and addiction treatment since 2018, including nearly $70 million in the previous year. The Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation has spent nearly $159 million on its PlaySmart programme, while iGaming Ontario has introduced BetGuard, a centralized self-exclusion system for regulated online sites.
A separate Toronto Star investigation reported this month that iGaming Ontario shelved a pre-launch study intended to set a baseline for problem-gambling rates after researchers produced results that were higher than expected.
