We Update Canadians on the State Of Bill C-290 and Where It Is Likely To Be Heading

May 14, 2014

We have discussed the ill-fated Bill C-290 several times here on this site already. But today, we want to take a look at where Bill C-290 is, and a few things that have happened recently to affect it. For those that don’t know, Bill C-290 is a proposed change to current online gambling laws that would see single event sports betting online become legal in Canada.

What do we mean by singe event sports betting? Well, we are talking about those major once a year sporting events, such as the Super Bowl, or even lesser events. Right now it is illegal in Canada for an online gambling site to offer a sports betting service allowing Canadian people to wager on events such as these.

Now, currently, a few new advocates of Bill C-290 have cropped up, and some of them are also pushing some positive benefits that would be the result of Bill C-290 being passed. For example, it is predicted that Caesars Windsor would employ a couple of hundred extra people to cover the resource overhead of online gambling on sports betting style sites being allowed.

Let’s take a look, in contrast, the situation on Nevada, USA. At the beginning of the year, US citizens wagered over $90 million over Super Bowl weekend. This resulted in a nice chunk of change for the US Government in the form of gambling tax. Right now, Canada misses out on this kind of tax revenue, due to the fact that online gambling remains illegal, as does any kind of online casino play, including online sports betting.

Bill Rutsey, who is the CEO and President of the Canadian Gaming Association, says that Canada could benefit from similar tax income, if it wasn’t for the Senate. He has said that, “What is the status quo? It is reliably estimated that Canadians are spending over $4 billion annually through illegal offshore online sports books that are easily available to anyone with Internet access, but it doesn’t stop there. Canadians are betting up to a further $10 billion through illegal bookmaking operated by organized crime, such as the Hells Angels. By way of comparison, ‘parlay’ bets, the legal sports wagering offered through provincial lottery corporations, capture about $500 million annually — a pittance next to the $14 billion otherwise bet.”

So we can easily see the benefits to be had if Bill C-290 were adopted, and online casino sites were allowed to offer online sports betting.