Ontario's Gambling and Legalising Online Single-event Gambling

16 September 2026

A major Canadian study has found that emergency-department visits for gambling disorders almost doubled after Ontario expanded its online gambling market to private companies and legalised single-event sports betting. The study analyzed 952 such visits from January 2012 to June 2023. Most troublingly, the increase was predominantly seen among young men. Men aged 18 to 29 saw a 154% increase in gambling disorder-related emergency department visits, compared to the number expected. Men aged 30 to 44 saw a 116% increase in this period.

Moreover, most emergency-department visits, over 70%, involved another mental-health condition or heavy substance use. Almost one-third of these visits led to hospital admission.

Other research points to a similar pattern as digital gambling expands globally:

In Great Britain, more than 562,000 people had registered with the self-exclusion programme GAMSTOP by the end of 2023. The programme registered 117,756 new users in 2023, the highest annual total on record — a 19% year-on-year increase. Importantly, more than 31% of under-25s in the second half of 2023 opted to self-exclude, a significant increase over the year before. This is a signal of rising demand for supportive frameworks as more people recognize problematic gambling behavior.

In the US, searches for help with gambling addiction increased by 23% nationally between 2022 and 2023, according to a recent study. When online sportsbooks became available in Pennsylvania in 2021, searches for help with gambling addiction surged by 61%.

More on this is available via KE-Bet.com in-play betting overview.

Growing online gambling has always been associated with higher rates of problem gambling and gambling harm than land-based play. But more people now recognize it as an issue of serious scale. In the UK, gambling-reform legislation passed in 2023 included major new rules for gambling operators: they must take proactive steps to assess potential harm to bettors, including financial checks to identify risky gambling behavior. That reform came after the government accepted evidence that the online era demanded stronger protections.

But even the current rules don't go far enough: overseas operators often evade these checks, and their services are consumed by concerning numbers of people in jurisdictions like New Zealand. With international gambling websites operating outside core regulations, vulnerable consumers may find themselves targeted by less carefully regulated services.