iGaming Ontario shelved a longitudinal study intended to establish a baseline for problem gambling before the province’s regulated online betting and casino market opened, after researchers found rates far higher than expected, according to internal records.
The Toronto Star, which obtained the records, reported that agency executives kept the work confidential, considered a possible “gag order” and discussed how to limit reputational damage if findings leaked or researchers criticized the agency publicly. The underlying findings remain withheld despite an access-to-information appeal to the Information and Privacy Commissioner.
The Responsible Gambling Council won the contract for the study, whose first survey wave took place in February 2022, two months before the market opened. It was designed to track the same participants across three data-collection waves over two years, with the stated purpose of measuring gambling participation and problem gambling and adapting iGaming Ontario’s responsible-gambling programme to player needs.
Internal meeting notes described “unexpected” problem-gambling rates that diverged substantially from other research. In December 2022, senior manager Melissa Ball instructed a colleague not to share the baseline results widely while the agency discussed them internally.
Martha Otton of iGaming Ontario supported adding a telephone sample in the second survey wave because she was concerned that the initial methodology could be influencing the rate. iGaming Ontario subsequently said the study did not meet the standard needed to inform policy development because of methodological concerns.
But two participating researchers, Iris Balodis and Michael Wohl, said their involvement had been explicitly conditional on publishing the findings. They later parted ways with both the Responsible Gambling Council and iGaming Ontario after disagreeing about how to proceed.
The agency hired Counsel Public Affairs in 2023 for strategic planning and reactive messaging concerning the study. A final draft was delivered in August 2024, but the following month iGaming Ontario decided against further work, additional spending to improve it or publication.
Ontario’s regulated market opened on April 4, 2022, with 46 operators and more than 70 gaming sites. In its first year, it recorded more than $35.5 billion in wagers, while iGaming Ontario’s annual report said it had commissioned research on participation and high-risk gambling behaviour as part of its responsible-gambling work.
The dispute over the unpublished baseline sits alongside sharply different available estimates. The Conversation cited research by some of the study’s researchers putting Ontario’s problem-gambling rate at about 9% shortly before launch, compared with a 1.1% 2018 estimate attributed to Statistics Canada; Mental Health Research Canada later reported an 11% Ontario rate in December 2024.
Separate research on Ontario Problem Gambling Helpline calls found that calls concerning online gambling rose from an average of 29 a month before the market expansion to nearly 93 a month afterward. The researchers found an association with the expanded legal market and advertising, but said the two effects could not be disentangled because they occurred at the same time.
Statistics Canada has said that growing gambling availability and technologies including online poker and sports betting make regular monitoring increasingly important. In 2018, it estimated that 1.6% of Canadian gamblers aged 15 and older, about 304,000 people, faced moderate-to-severe risk of problem gambling.
