iGaming Ontario (iGO) is the provincial subsidiary that conducts and manages Ontario's open, regulated online gambling market. It launched on 4 April 2022, the AGCO is the regulator, and you must be 19+ to play. Here is how it all fits together.
Reviewed by Nathan Birch · Updated September 2026
Editorial note: This guide is general information, not legal advice. Gambling law in Canada is set federally and administered province by province, and it changes. For decisions about your situation, consult a qualified Canadian lawyer.
iGaming Ontario (iGO) is the provincial agency that runs Ontario's open, regulated online gambling market. It is a subsidiary of the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO), and it acts as the "conductor and manager" of the market — signing operating agreements with the private casino, sportsbook and poker operators that serve Ontario players. The regulated market launched on 4 April 2022, the AGCO is the regulator and registrar, and the minimum age to play is 19. If you only remember one thing, remember this: the AGCO makes and enforces the rules, while iGO holds the commercial agreements that let private brands legally operate in Ontario.
Ontario is, at the time of this September 2026 update, the only Canadian province running a fully open, multi-operator online gambling market of this kind — although Alberta has since launched its own Ontario-style market (see our Alberta iGaming guide). Everywhere else in Canada, legal online play still runs through a provincial crown corporation. For the wider picture, see our overview of online gambling laws in Canada.
| Regulator / registrar | Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO) |
|---|---|
| Conductor & manager | iGaming Ontario (iGO), a subsidiary of the AGCO |
| Market launched | 4 April 2022 |
| Minimum age | 19+ |
| Products | Online casino, sports betting, poker |
| Registered operators | Dozens of operators and suppliers (list changes — check the public register) |
| Public register | igamingontario.ca — registered operators |
The reason Ontario needs both an AGCO and an iGO comes down to Canada's Criminal Code. Under sections 201–207, gaming and betting are an offence unless the activity is "conducted and managed" by a provincial government (section 207(1)(a)). Provinces can delegate that conduct-and-manage role, but someone on the government side has to legally stand behind the market. That is what iGaming Ontario does.
Here is the division of labour:
So a brand cannot simply buy a licence and go live. It must first register with the AGCO (meeting the Registrar's Standards) and sign an operating agreement with iGO. Only when both are in place can it legally take Ontario players. This two-step structure is what lets a competitive private market exist while still satisfying the Criminal Code's requirement that the province conduct and manage the gaming.
Before 4 April 2022, the only clearly legal online gambling option for Ontarians was the provincial lottery corporation's own site. In practice, though, hundreds of thousands of Ontarians played at offshore casinos and sportsbooks — sites licensed abroad that accepted Canadian players but sat outside any Ontario regulatory framework. This was the "grey market": not a market the province had approved, but one where players were never prosecuted for taking part.
The 2022 launch created a licensed home for that activity. Two changes made it possible. First, the federal Safe and Regulated Sports Betting Act (Bill C-218), in force 27 August 2021, repealed the Criminal Code prohibition on single-event sports betting, which had previously limited legal wagers to parlay-style "pro-line" bets. Second, Ontario stood up the iGO framework so private operators could migrate into a regulated market. The result: familiar brands that had operated in the grey market could register, agree terms with iGO and offer their products legally, subject to Ontario's consumer-protection, advertising and responsible-gambling standards.
Getting into Ontario's market is a compliance exercise, not a formality. An operator must:
Because both the operator and its suppliers are on the record, the AGCO can trace responsibility if something goes wrong with a game, a payout or a promotion.
You do not have to take an operator's word for it. The AGCO and iGO publish a public register of registered operators and suppliers. If a brand appears on that list, it holds an AGCO registration and an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. If it does not appear, it is not part of Ontario's regulated market — even if the site is reachable from an Ontario connection.
The register has grown to dozens of operators. Editorially — and to be clear, we hold no affiliate relationship with any of these brands — names Ontarians will recognise on it include BetMGM, DraftKings, FanDuel, bet365, Caesars and PokerStars, alongside many others. We list these purely as examples of well-known brands that chose to register in Ontario; their presence on the register is a matter of public record, and the current, authoritative list always lives on the AGCO's site. Before depositing anywhere that claims to be "regulated in Ontario," check the register directly.
To play at any Ontario-registered operator you must be 19 or older — Ontario's minimum gambling age. (Ages differ by province; some allow 18. See our guide to the legal gambling age in Canada.) Registered operators enforce this with three layers of checks:
If you have noticed that Ontario-registered casinos advertise far more quietly than offshore sites do, that is by design. The AGCO's advertising and marketing standards restrict how registered operators can promote bonuses and inducements to the general public. Broadly, operators cannot advertise bonuses, credits, free bets or similar inducements directly to the wider public in Ontario; such offers can generally only be communicated on the operator's own controlled channels to people who have actively chosen to engage. Ontario also tightened rules around the use of athletes and celebrities in gambling ads.
The practical effect: the big, splashy "get $X free" welcome-offer advertising common in unregulated markets is largely absent from Ontario's regulated brands. It is a consumer-protection measure aimed at reducing gambling-related harm, and it is one of the clearest day-to-day differences between the regulated Ontario market and the offshore world.
Registration brings a floor of protections that offshore play does not guarantee:
A notable development came in February 2024, when an Ontario Superior Court reference confirmed that Ontario residents may legally play against players located in other regulated jurisdictions. This matters most for online poker and other peer-to-peer games: shared "liquidity" means Ontario players can join larger international player pools, producing bigger tournaments, fuller cash-game tables and a better overall experience than a walled-off Ontario-only pool could offer.
For recreational players, no. Under the Income Tax Act and the CRA's administrative position, gambling and lottery winnings are treated as a windfall, not "income from a source," so they are not taxable. The exceptions: a professional gambler who carries on gambling as a business may be taxed on net winnings, and any interest or investment income you earn on your winnings is taxable. We cover the details, case law and crypto wrinkles in our guide to tax on casino winnings in Canada. For anything specific to your circumstances, speak with a Canadian accountant.
We want to be straightforward about where De La Mer sits. Our own recommended casino lineup is offshore — the operators we cover are licensed in Curaçao, Malta or by the Kahnawake Gaming Commission, and they are not registered with iGaming Ontario. The BetMGM, DraftKings, bet365 and similar brands named above are AGCO-registered and part of Ontario's regulated market; we do not have an affiliate relationship with them and do not link to them, so you will not find them in any table on this site.
The difference matters. An AGCO-registered site gives you Ontario's provincial consumer protections: audited games, centralized self-exclusion, dispute oversight and enforcement by the regulator. An offshore site that Ontarians can also reach is licensed abroad, so it carries the standards of that foreign regulator, not Ontario's. Under the Criminal Code, enforcement targets operators and providers, not players, and Canada has never prosecuted a player for using an offshore casino — but the provincial safety net is not the same.
One point of frequent confusion: the Kahnawake Gaming Commission is a Mohawk Nation regulator based on the Kahnawake reserve near Montreal, in Quebec. It is a First Nations regulator asserting inherent jurisdiction — it is not a provincial or federal Canadian regulator, and a Kahnawake licence is not an Ontario or Canadian provincial licence. We explain what a Kahnawake licence does and does not mean in our Kahnawake Gaming Commission guide.
If you are comparing our offshore lineup, see the best online casinos pillar and our Ontario-focused casino page. These are offshore operators — licensed in Curaçao, Malta or by the Kahnawake Gaming Commission — and are not registered with iGaming Ontario.
A lot of Ontarians assume iGaming Ontario and the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation (OLG) are the same body, or that one reports to the other. They do not. Both are Ontario government entities, but they run different parts of the province's gambling landscape, and keeping them straight tells you which set of rules and protections applies where.
The OLG is the long-standing provincial crown corporation. It runs the province's lotteries (Lotto 6/49, Lottario, scratch tickets), operates OLG.ca — the government's own online casino and lottery site — oversees Ontario's land-based casinos and slots at racetracks, and runs the PROLINE and PROLINE+ sports-betting products. In other words, the OLG is itself an operator: when you play on OLG.ca, you are playing directly with the province.
iGaming Ontario does something different. It does not run games of its own for the public to play. Instead, it conducts and manages the private, multi-operator online market — the dozens of competing casino, sportsbook and poker brands that registered after 4 April 2022. The OLG sits inside that market as one option among many, but it is not part of the iGO framework; it operates under its own long-standing authority. So the simple version: the OLG is a government operator you play with directly, while iGO is the government body that lets private brands operate legally alongside it.
Ontario's regulated market did not stay small. From a standing start in April 2022 it grew to dozens of registered operators running many more individual gaming sites, since a single operator can run several brands. Rather than quote figures that go stale between updates, we point you to the source: iGaming Ontario publishes an annual report and quarterly market updates that track total wagers, gaming revenue and active player accounts across the market. Those reports are the authoritative record of how large the market has become, and they show steady expansion since launch.
What the numbers really capture is the shift the 2022 launch was meant to achieve — moving play out of an unregulated grey market and into a licensed one where the province can see the activity, tax the revenue and enforce standards. The table below sums up that before-and-after in plain terms.
| Before 4 April 2022 (grey market) | After 4 April 2022 (regulated) | |
|---|---|---|
| Legal status of private online play | Unregulated; offshore sites accepted Ontarians outside any provincial framework | Private operators can register and operate legally under iGO |
| Who stands behind the market | Only the provincial lottery site (OLG) was clearly legal | iGaming Ontario conducts and manages a competitive private market |
| Consumer protection | Whatever the foreign licence provided; no Ontario oversight | AGCO Registrar's Standards, audited games, dispute channels |
| Responsible-gambling tools | Varied by site; no centralized self-exclusion | Mandatory RG tools and centralized self-exclusion |
| Revenue & oversight | Left the province untaxed and unmonitored | Tracked and reported in iGO's public annual reports |
Because both regulated and offshore sites are reachable from an Ontario connection, it is worth knowing how to tell them apart before you deposit. This is general guidance, not legal advice, but the checks are straightforward:
Sites licensed only in Curaçao, Anjouan, Malta (MGA) or by the Kahnawake Gaming Commission are not on the iGO register and carry no Ontario consumer protection. That is not a claim they are unsafe — it is a factual statement about which regulator, if any, stands behind them. Our own recommended lineup is offshore, so we say this plainly rather than blur the line.
One of the clearest advantages of the regulated market is that responsible-gambling (RG) protections are mandatory, not optional extras. Under the AGCO's Registrar's Standards, every registered operator must build these tools in and must actively use them:
None of these tools guarantee you will not lose money — the games always favour the house — but they give Ontario players a safety net that unregulated offshore play does not require. If gambling stops being fun, using a deposit limit or the self-exclusion program early is far easier than trying to claw things back later.
iGaming Ontario (iGO) is a provincial agency and subsidiary of the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario. It acts as the conductor and manager of Ontario's open, regulated online gambling market, signing operating agreements with the private casino, sportsbook and poker operators that serve Ontario players. The market launched on 4 April 2022 and you must be 19 or older to play.
No. The AGCO (Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario) is the independent regulator and registrar that sets the standards, registers operators and suppliers and enforces the rules. iGaming Ontario is a separate subsidiary of the AGCO that acts as the commercial conductor and manager, holding the operating agreements with each private operator. In short: the AGCO regulates, iGO conducts and manages.
Ontario's open, regulated iGaming market went live on 4 April 2022. Before that date, Ontarians could only legally play at the provincial site, but many used offshore casinos in an unregulated grey market. The launch created a licensed framework in which private operators can offer online casino, sports betting and poker to Ontario residents.
You must be 19 or older to gamble online in Ontario, whether at a registered iGaming Ontario operator or at the provincial site. Registered operators verify your age and identity during sign-up (KYC) and use geolocation to confirm you are physically in Ontario.
The AGCO publishes a public register of every operator and supplier registered to serve Ontario's regulated market at igamingontario.ca. If a brand is on that list, it holds an AGCO registration and an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Sites not on the register are not part of the Ontario regulated market, even if Ontarians can access them.
The AGCO's advertising and marketing standards restrict how registered operators can promote bonuses and inducements to the general public in Ontario. Direct advertising of bonuses, credits and free bets to the wider public is largely prohibited, which is why you see fewer splashy welcome-offer ads from Ontario-registered brands than in unregulated markets.
For recreational players, gambling winnings in Ontario and across Canada are not taxable, because the Canada Revenue Agency treats them as a windfall rather than income from a source. Professional gamblers who carry on gambling as a business may be taxed on net winnings, and any interest or investment income earned on winnings is taxable.
Yes. Following a February 2024 Ontario Superior Court reference, Ontario residents may legally play against players located in other regulated jurisdictions. This matters most for online poker and peer-to-peer games, because shared liquidity means larger player pools, bigger tournaments and better games.
Operator registration carries a fee in the region of C$100,000 per gaming site, per year, paid on top of the compliance work required to meet the AGCO's Registrar's Standards. Operators must also pass background and eligibility checks, use registered suppliers, and have their game technology certified by an independent testing lab. Those costs and checks are a big reason unregulated offshore sites do not enter the market.
No. The OLG (Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation) is a crown corporation that runs the province's lotteries, land-based casinos, PROLINE sports betting and its own OLG.ca site — it is itself an operator. iGaming Ontario does not run games for the public; it conducts and manages the private, multi-operator online market of competing casino, sportsbook and poker brands that launched on 4 April 2022.
You must be 19+ to gamble in Ontario. Gambling winnings are tax-free for recreational players in Canada, but the games always favour the house. If gambling stops being fun, help is available: ConnexOntario 1-866-531-2600 (free, confidential, 24/7) and ResponsibleGambling.ca. Ontario's centralized self-exclusion program can block your access across registered operators.