Stop single-game sports betting
When the federal government made it legal to bet on individual sporting events in 2021, it seemed a bad idea. Four years ago, when Ontario opened such betting up more widely than anywhere else in the country, it seemed like a worse one.
Both assessments were too generous. Allowing private companies to run operations where people can bet on sports, even as they’re in progress, has been a catastrophe.
The least serious but most irritating outcome has been the profusion of ads for sports gambling. Anyone who just wants to watch a Jays game has to sit through not just saturation-level commercials, but also reminders by commentators and hosts about odds and matchups. Betting companies’ logos are everywhere, even as sponsors of segments offering analysis or colour commentary.
The provincial government has always had dollar signs in its eyes, but the move to allow sports betting operations into the market was originally pitched as a necessary one. Such gambling was already happening on the black market, earnest proponents said with straight faces. Give people a way to gamble legally and the government makes money while criminal activity declines.
In reality, far more people are gambling now than ever before. Single-game betting through sportsbook apps have made it unconscionably easy to instantly and repeatedly risk money on anything from whether a goalie will make a save on the next shot to whether a basketball player will foul out.
If anything, criminal activity has just shifted focus and strengthened. Convictions of players and coaching staff for gambling-related activity have already proven that. Even players who steer clear of criminality endure endless abuse for supposedly wrecking gamblers’ bets.
No longer do these new gamblers watch a matchup to enjoy it on its own merits. Phone in hand, the matchup now becomes a game itself, inducing floods of dopamine when it goes well and anxiety when it doesn’t.
An article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal in March noted that males between 15 and 24 contacted the province’s mental health and addictions helpline for concerns related to gambling at a rate that shot up by more than 300 per cent between 2012 and 2025. When the promises of quick cash and fun don’t materialize, it’s not Doug Ford or the sportsbook CEOs paying the price.
Ontario jumped on misguided federal legislation and allowed private companies to make app-based single-game gambling accessible and addictive. It is reaping financial rewards at the cost of a generation’s mental health.
What was started not only can be stopped, it must be. Now.
