Current sports betting industry is handcuffed
Canadian sports fans who want to throw a few bucks down on a game will soon be able to, thanks to the Senate of Canada passing bill C-218 on Tuesday. The bill, which passed 57-20-5, legalizes single-event sports betting in the country. All that is left now, as it already passed the House of Commons, is to go to the Governor General for royal assent to become law, something that is expected to happen within a few days.
A point of order: sports betting was already legal in Canada. The problem, though, was that the law only permitted parlay betting. So, if you wanted to wager on tonight’s Bucks/Hawks NBA conference finals game, you would also have to pick at least two more events to combine into a parlay. And if you got one of the legs of the parlay wrong, the entire bet lost.
Bill C-218 changes the country’s criminal code to specifically legalize single-event betting, doing away with the parlay requirement.
Some lawmakers wanted to add a couple amendments before voting, but neither found their way into the bill. One amendment would have made match-fixing illegal, which is certainly something that should be illegal, but proponents of the bill argued that match-fixing was already covered by other laws. Another amendment wanted to address First Nations inclusion in the sports betting industry, but those who opposed said it simply wasn’t within the scope of the bill. The bill only makes single-event sports betting legal; the regulatory structures are already in place.
Single-event betting should fix some problems
The current parlay-only law is probably in place to try to curb match-fixing. While not impossible, it is highly improbable that someone would be able to successful fix a game to win a parlay bet, as they would have to fix three at once.
But proponents of single-event betting like Senator David Wells, believe the parlay requirement has had a negative effect, sending Canadian bettors to sites outside of the country. Last Thursday, when speaking to the Senate, Wells said:
Canadians are placing billions of dollars worth of bets annually through these sites that go entirely unregulated in Canada and are not held to our consumer protection and safety standards. These same Canadians are, oftentimes unknowingly, being exposed to the risks that accompany that. In fact, when dealing with unregulated betting, there are no Canadian regulations around when a payout is deposited, if ever.
Though sports betting is ultimately governed by the individual provinces, Wells says that current regulations for parlay betting would apply to single-event betting, so consumer protections would be in place from day one.
In addition to protecting the consumer, the other big reason for legalizing single-event betting is to keep money in Canada. Canadians bet an estimated CAD$14.5bn (USD$11.8bn) each year, but only about CAD$500m (USD$406m) of that is bet on legal parlays.
