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iGaming Ontario (iGO) released new data on Wednesday (July 19) that includes the split between online casino gaming and sports betting for the first time.
The entity, which conducts and manages the privately-operated Ontario gaming market, reported $545m in total gaming revenue in the first quarter of the fiscal year, ranging from April 1 through June 30.
The revenue is slightly ahead of the fourth quarter of the last fiscal year to set a new record quarter, when operators brought in $520m.
To date, 46 operators have launched in the province, utilizing 71 different gaming websites.
Prior to Wednesday, iGO had yet to officially indicate what share of the revenue was the result of online casino gaming compared with sports betting, but the latest revenue report included such a split for the first quarter, as well as the year prior.
In the first quarter, online casino gaming accounted for $392m, or 72 percent of the overall gaming revenue, with sports betting accounting for $138m, 25 percent of the total revenue.
Poker brought in $15m, making up the remaining 3 percent.
Those figures would put Ontario just behind New Jersey and Pennsylvania among North American markets that feature privately operated online sports betting and online casino gaming.
Over the same three-month stretch, New Jersey operators collected $469m in online casino revenue and $220m in sports-betting revenue.
Pennsylvania operators made $413m in online casino revenue and $142m in sports-betting win.
Michigan is also likely to be ahead of Ontario over the same stretch, but the state has yet to release revenue figures for June.
During the period from March to May, the state brought in $481m in online casino revenue and $118m in sports-betting revenue, although the latter number is boosted by the NCAA Men’s Basketball tournament in March.
Those percentages are fairly close to the overall split since the private market launched last April. For the first full year of gaming, online casino brought in $940m in revenue, 67 percent of the $1.4bn in revenue collected by operators since April 4.
Operators made $433m in sports betting, 31 percent of the total, and $40m from poker.
All of the Ontario revenue figures still exclude results from the government-run Ontario Lottery and Gaming product, which is believed to add a significant amount to the province’s totals.
Beyond revenue data, Ontario is also still in something of a holding pattern regarding proposed regulatory changes that would seriously affect the advertising market in the province.
In April, the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO), which regulates gaming in the province, announced a consultation process to enact new regulations that would prohibit the use of professional athletes, both active and retired, in sports-betting advertising.
In addition, the rule would expand upon a prohibition on celebrity endorsers, broadening the definition of prohibited endorsers from those “whose primary appeal is to minors” to include those “who would be reasonably expected to appeal to minors.”
During an appearance at the Canadian Gaming Summit in Toronto on June 14, AGCO CEO Tom Mungham said a resolution was “weeks, not months” away, but five weeks later, no further news has come from the AGCO.
Gaming News Canada reported last month that Ontario’s provincial government had stepped in and “told the AGCO to hit the pause button on releasing the new standards.”
The AGCO said Wednesday that “we have nothing further to update at this time.”
“Once the process is complete, if there are changes to standards, this information will be provided to stakeholders and posted to our website,” the AGCO told VIXIO GamblingCompliance in an email.
