Ontario's regulated market just posted its biggest month yet, a record 9.59 billion dollars in total wagers in March 2026 according to iGaming Ontario. But the headline number hides the real story: the growth is coming from online casino play, not from the sportsbooks the market was supposed to be built around.
Of the 387 million dollars operators earned that month, online casino generated 318.5 million, about 82 percent of the total, with casino handle up nearly 26 percent year over year. Sports betting went the other way: roughly 1.08 billion dollars wagered, a handle down 9 percent on March 2025 and the weakest sports month since September.
That is close to the opposite of how the market was sold. When single-event betting became legal across Canada in 2021 and Ontario opened its regulated market in 2022, the pitch was sports: the marquee operators, the team deals, the app launches. Four years on, the ledger says Canadians mostly want slots, live dealer tables and the rest of the casino floor.
Some of the reason is structural. Casino runs every day of the year with no off-season and no fixture list to wait on, and a session can start and finish in seconds while a bet slip waits on a game. The market is also crowded: more than 80 sites across roughly 50 operators now compete in Ontario, and the biggest names long ago built full casino lobbies next to their sportsbooks.
There is a player-protection reading here too. Casino games are fast and continuous, which is exactly why the same regulated framework that licenses these operators also requires deposit limits, self-exclusion and published responsible-gambling tools. If you play, set those limits before you start, not after a bad night.
For us the figure settles a question we get a lot: is a casino-first site the right lens on the Canadian market? The data says yes. Casino is where the money, and the players, actually are, and it is the part of the market we cover operator by operator, checked against the official registries.