Is Sports Betting Legal in Ontario? All 35 Registered Books

Yes. Sports betting is legal in Ontario if you are 19 or older, physically inside the province, and betting with an operator on the government’s register. Thirty-five sites hold that licence. Everything else on this page is how to tell them apart.

• It is legal, online and in person, through operators on the provincial register.
• 19 or over to bet online. PROLINE bought over a lottery counter is 18+.
• You must be physically in Ontario when you place the bet. Living here is not enough.
• 35 sites are registered for sport and event betting, run by 30 companies.
• Two bodies share the job. The AGCO registers and regulates the operator; iGaming Ontario holds the operating agreement.
• Recreational winnings are not taxed in Canada, and losses are not deductible.

That last part is where the useful work is. Every guide repeats that Ontario is regulated. Almost none of them tells you which company is actually behind the brand you are about to hand money to, or how to check it in the two minutes before you deposit. So we went through the register line by line.

How We Checked the Register

The register is a public directory, and it is the only document that settles the question. iGaming Ontario publishes every site operating under an agreement with it, grouped by the legal entity that holds the registration. We read all of it, not the first page.

• The source. The iGaming Ontario operator directory, which declares itself accurate as of 1 September 2026 and carries 49 operators running 84 gaming websites.
• What we counted. Every site listed under Sport and Event Betting, counted by hand from the register rather than taken from anyone’s roundup. That is 35 of the 84.
• The grouping. The register lists sites under the company that holds the licence, so it also shows which brands share one registration. That is the part nobody publishes.

The figures below are a snapshot of a document that changes. Brands enter and leave, and the register itself is only as current as the date it prints on itself.

The Four Legal Ways to Bet in Ontario

There is more than one legal channel, and they are not regulated the same way. The AGCO sets out four: an iGO-regulated gaming site or app, OLG’s PROLINE+ online, OLG’s PROLINE at a lottery retailer, and the sportsbooks inside some land-based casinos.

AGCO vs iGaming Ontario: Who Does What

Two organisations appear on every registered site, they are not the same thing, and knowing which is which tells you where to take a problem.

The AGCO is the regulator. iGaming Ontario is the counterparty your operator signed an agreement with.

Every Sportsbook Legally Registered in Ontario

Thirty-five sites are licensed for sport and event betting. We opened and counted the board on 23 of them in our guide to sports betting in Ontario, and measured every one of their apps in our Ontario betting apps comparison.

The Full List, With the Company Behind Each Brand

Below is all of them, with the company that actually holds the registration and, where the operator publishes it, the AGCO registration number we recorded when we reviewed the brand.

Thirty-Five Sportsbooks, Thirty Companies

The register lists 35 sportsbooks, but only 30 companies hold those licences. Three groups run more than one book, which means that choosing between some of these brands is choosing between two front doors into the same company.

• Canadix Limited is the company behind three sportsbooks: Betinia, Swiper and ToonieBet.
• ElectraWorks Maple Limited holds five registered sites, three of them sportsbooks: Bwin, Partysports and Sports Interaction.
• Bally’s Canada Inc. runs two: Bally Bet and Monopoly, both licensed for casino and sport.
• It is not a loophole. Every one of those sites is separately registered and separately listed. It simply means the owner, the terms and often the platform behind them are shared.

Sharing a company does not mean sharing a registration number. Each site gets its own: Bwin and Partysports, both ElectraWorks Maple Limited, carry the consecutive numbers OPIG1233926 and OPIG1233927, while Canadix’s three books hold three numbers that are nowhere near each other in sequence. The number identifies the website, not the group behind it.

Some large operators go the other way and split one brand across several registrations. BetMGM appears four times in the register — as a casino, a poker room, a sportsbook and Wheel of Fortune Casino — because each product is registered separately. Five sites in the province are licensed for sport and event betting and nothing else: BetMGM Sportsbook, DraftKings Sportsbook, FanDuel Sportsbook, Partysports and 888 Sport.

The Company Name Is Never the Brand Name

This is the single most confusing thing about verifying an Ontario book, and it catches people out. The name on the register is the legal entity, and it usually looks nothing like the logo on the website.

How to Check a Book Yourself in Two Minutes

If a site is registered, three things will be true at once, and all of them are checkable before you type a card number. This is the sequence we use.

1. Look at the footer first. A registered operator states it there. The wording is close to identical across the province: authorised, licensed and regulated by the AGCO, with a registration number, for users 19+ physically located in Ontario.
2. Find the registration number. It starts with OPIG and is followed by seven digits. It belongs to that individual site rather than to the parent company, and it is the thing an unlicensed copycat cannot fake convincingly. One registered brand breaks this pattern – see below.
3. Search the register for the brand. Open the iGaming Ontario operator directory and search the brand name. If it appears, read the company name in the heading above it — that is who holds your money’s licence.
4. Check what it is licensed for. The register lists the categories beside each site. A site listed only under Casino is not licensed to take your sports bet, whatever the site’s own menu offers.

If any one of the four fails, stop. A site that will not say who it is regulated by, on the page where it asks for your money, has told you something.

The One Exception We Found

Checking the footer number works for every book on the register but one.

Maverick Games publishes “License number: GRSM1295653”. GRSM is the prefix the AGCO uses for gaming-related suppliers – the companies that supply games and services – not for operators.

The brand is registered: it appears in the iGaming Ontario directory under Shelgeyr Ontario Ltd, in both categories. But its footer does not name that company, and the number it does show is not an operator number.

The lesson is the order of the checks. The register is the authority; the footer is only a shortcut, and here the shortcut fails.

When Sports Betting Became Legal in Ontario

Two separate dates matter, and they are often merged into one. Federal law changed first; Ontario’s open market followed eight months later.

The Legal Betting Age Is 18 or 19, Depending Where

Ontario does not have one gambling age, and this is the detail most guides get wrong. The split is not between sports and casino — it is between the counter and the screen.

• 18 and over for lottery, charitable gaming and in-store sports betting — PROLINE bought over the counter at a lottery retailer.
• 19 and over to visit a casino or slot facility, and to play online casino games or bet on sport online.
• No exceptions for a registered site. The Registrar’s Standards exclude anyone under 19 from a gaming site, with one narrow carve-out: an 18-year-old may access it solely to buy a lottery ticket.

Read together, that means an 18-year-old in Ontario can legally place a sports bet — but only on paper, at a retailer. The moment the same bet moves to an app, the age is 19. Every registered book enforces it at account level, which is why identity verification happens before a first withdrawal rather than after it, and why an account opened with the wrong date of birth is closed rather than corrected.

You Have to Be In Ontario, Not From Ontario

The rule is about your body, not your address. Every registered operator states that you must be physically located in Ontario to place a bet, and being an Ontario resident is not a substitute for being in the province at the moment you place it.

What surprised us is where that check is not. Loading the site is not the same as being allowed to bet: when we opened bet365 and NorthStar Bets over a European connection, both Ontario lobbies rendered normally, with boards and prices on screen. The geolocation check is not a wall at the front door — it sits at the point where you log in and wager, not where you browse.

The practical consequences are dull but real. Cross into Quebec or New York and the bet slip stops working, though your account stays open and your balance is untouched. Operators also treat any attempt to disguise your location as a breach of their own terms, and the penalty in those terms is normally forfeiture rather than a warning. We are not going to explain how the checks are circumvented, because the outcome of trying is a closed account and a lost balance.

What Happens If You Use an Offshore Site

Plenty of unlicensed sites accept Ontario players, and they are not on the register. The honest position is that the Criminal Code aims at whoever conducts and manages an unlicensed game, not at the individual placing the bet — but that is also where the reassurance ends, because everything that protects you disappears with the licence.

What an Offshore Sportsbook Actually Is

An offshore sportsbook is simply one that takes bets from Ontario without holding an Ontario registration. Many hold a licence somewhere else – Curacao, Malta, Kahnawake – and some say so prominently. That licence governs the operator where it is issued; it gives you nothing here.

What You Give Up Without a Registration

The practical differences show up at the worst moment. A registered book must verify your identity, hold your funds under its obligations, and answer a complaints process that ends at a regulator in this province. An unregistered one answers to whoever issued its licence, on another continent, in another language, on its own timetable.

Payments are the tell most people notice first. Registered books settle in Canadian dollars through ordinary Canadian rails; unregistered ones often route you through cryptocurrency or an intermediary, which is also what makes a disputed withdrawal so hard to reverse.

The first three rows are iGaming Ontario’s own summary of the difference, not ours. The fourth is the one that bites in practice: when an offshore book stops answering, there is no Ontario body that can compel it to pay, because it never agreed to be compelled.

Do You Pay Tax on Betting Winnings in Ontario?

No, not if you bet recreationally. The Canada Revenue Agency treats gambling winnings as a windfall rather than income, under paragraph 40(2)(f) of the Income Tax Act, so a winning parlay does not go on your return and nothing is withheld when you withdraw.

The symmetry is the part people forget: because the winnings are not taxed, the losses are not deductible either. You cannot offset a bad season against other income.

There is one exception, and it is narrower than the internet suggests. If gambling is conducted as a business — with a system, sustained effort, records and a reasonable expectation of profit rather than luck — the CRA can treat the proceeds as business income and tax them. That test looks at how you operate, not at how much you won, and a single large win does not meet it. If your betting looks anything like a trade, that is a question for an accountant rather than a betting site. Nothing on this page is legal or tax advice.

The Advertising Rules You Will Notice

Ontario’s marketing rules explain several things that look odd if you have bet in another market. They are set out in the Registrar’s Standards for Internet Gaming and they changed on 28 February 2024.

• Standard 2.05: advertising and marketing that communicate gambling inducements, bonuses and credits are prohibited, except on the operator’s own gaming site and in direct marketing to players who have actively consented.
• Standard 2.04: active or retired athletes cannot be used in gaming advertising under any arrangement with an operator, except to advocate responsible gambling.

That is why you will not see an Ontario welcome offer on a billboard, on a broadcast, or on this page — the rule reaches the operators and the suppliers who market for them. It is also why the athlete-fronted campaigns that ran when the market opened disappeared. The standards also restrict celebrities, influencers, entertainers and cartoon figures where they would be likely to appeal to minors. If you see an Ontario-facing site publicly advertising a bonus, that is a signal about whether it is playing by the province’s rules.

How We Evaluate an Ontario Sportsbook

Registration is the floor, not the finish line. Every book below clears it, so the differences that matter are the ones you can check afterwards.

These are the ten things we test in every review on this site, in the order they tend to cost you money:

• Registration and what the site is actually licensed for
• How many markets it prices on an ordinary fixture, counted by hand
• The margin baked into those odds
• Live betting depth and whether cash out is offered
• The app, and what its own users rate it
• Deposit and withdrawal methods, limits and fees
• The published payout window, and whether there is one at all
• Support channels, and whether a human answers a phone
• Responsible gambling tools and how quickly limits take effect
• What the operator will not publish, which is often the most revealing part

The Best-Known Legal Sportsbooks in Ontario

These are the registered books most Ontario bettors will recognise, with the company that actually holds each licence. Recognition is not a recommendation – it is a starting point, and each name links to our full review.

If Something Goes Wrong, and Where to Get Help

Start with the operator. Registered sites are required to address player complaints, disputes and enquiries in a fair, timely and appropriate way, so the first step for an account, payment or technical problem is the book’s own support — in writing, with dates and amounts. For a bet placed in store rather than online, complaints go to the AGCO through its iAGCO online services.

Ontario also runs player protections that work across every registered site rather than one at a time. Every registered operator must offer deposit, loss and time limits, short cooling-off breaks and self-exclusion, and tightening a limit takes effect immediately while loosening one is deliberately delayed.

This page describes how the Ontario framework works. It is not legal advice, and the register maintained by iGaming Ontario and the standards published by the AGCO outrank anything we write about them.

FAQs

• Is bet365 legal in Ontario?

  Yes. bet365 is registered in Ontario through Hillside (International Sports) ENC, and the iGaming Ontario register lists it for both sport and event betting and casino. It is one of the 35 sites licensed to take a sports bet in the province.

• Is DraftKings legal in Ontario?

  Yes. DraftKings Sportsbook is registered through Crown DK CAN Ltd., the same company that holds the registrations for DraftKings Casino and Golden Nugget Casino. It is one of only five Ontario sites licensed for sport and event betting and nothing else.

• Is FanDuel legal in Ontario?

  Yes. FanDuel Sportsbook is registered through FanDuel Canada ULC, which also holds separate registrations for FanDuel Casino and FanDuel Poker. The sportsbook is one of only five Ontario sites licensed for sport and event betting and nothing else.

• Is BetMGM legal in Ontario?

  Yes, and it appears in the register four times. BetMGM Canada Inc. holds separate registrations for BetMGM Sportsbook, BetMGM Casino, BetMGM Poker and Wheel of Fortune Casino, because each product is registered as its own gaming site. It is the widest brand split on the Ontario register.

• Can you bet at 18 in Ontario?

  Only over the counter. Lottery, charitable gaming and in-store PROLINE betting are 18+, while online sports betting and online casino are 19+. An 18-year-old may access a registered gaming site solely to buy a lottery ticket, and for nothing else.

• Can tourists bet in Ontario?

  Yes, if they are physically in the province and old enough. The rule is about location rather than residency, so a visitor can open an account with a registered operator, subject to that operator’s own identity and payment checks. The account stops taking bets once you leave Ontario.

• What sports betting apps are legal in Ontario?

  Any app belonging to one of the 35 sites on the iGaming Ontario register. An app is not registered separately from the site behind it, so if the brand appears in the register under Sport and Event Betting, its Ontario app is covered by the same registration.

• What happens if a sportsbook is not registered in Ontario?

  It sits outside the province’s framework, and so do you while you use it. There is no Ontario body that can compel it to pay a withdrawal or resolve a dispute, no obligation on it to publish terms or hold funds securely, and Ontario self-exclusion does not reach it.

• Are sports betting winnings taxable in Ontario?

  Generally not. The Canada Revenue Agency treats recreational gambling winnings as a windfall rather than income, so they are not reported and nothing is withheld. Losses are not deductible either. Betting carried on as a business can be taxed as business income, which depends on individual circumstances.

• What is the difference between the AGCO and iGaming Ontario?

  The AGCO is the regulator: it registers operators, sets the Registrar’s Standards and issues the OPIG number in the footer. iGaming Ontario is the provincial agency that signs the operating agreement and conducts and manages the games. A legal Ontario site has both, not one.