Ontario's iGaming at year three: pooled liquidity, a rival next door

Ontario opened its regulated online gambling market in April 2022, and by its third year it has become the model other North American jurisdictions measure themselves against. The structure is distinctive, the economics are unusual, and in late 2025 and 2026 two developments — an appeal-court ruling on international liquidity and the launch of a rival market in Alberta — have made Ontario the most-watched file in Canadian gaming.

The conduct-and-manage model

Ontario splits its regulatory functions in two. The Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO) is the regulator: it registers Internet Gaming Operators and gaming-related suppliers and sets the standards. iGaming Ontario (iGO), a separate entity, is the “conduct and manage” authority — legally the party that conducts the gaming, with each operator signing an Operating Agreement with iGO to participate. The arrangement is a response to Canada’s constitutional framework, under which provinces conduct and manage gambling, and it is what lets private operators run in the open market while iGO remains the nominal conductor.

The commercial term is equally distinctive. Ontario does not levy a conventional tax rate; instead operators pay a contractual revenue share of roughly 20% of gaming revenue to iGaming Ontario. It is a negotiated commercial arrangement rather than a statutory duty, which makes Ontario’s headline “rate” a matter of market consensus rather than legislation — a nuance that matters when comparing it to tax-based regimes.

The pooled-liquidity fight

The most consequential legal development is about liquidity. In November 2025 the Ontario Court of Appeal ruled 4–1 that iGO may permit international pooled liquidity for peer-to-peer games such as poker and daily fantasy sports — allowing Ontario players to share prize pools with players in other jurisdictions rather than being confined to a domestic-only pool. For poker in particular, liquidity is existential: a market of Ontario’s size struggles to sustain competitive cash games and tournaments in isolation.

The ruling is not final. The Canadian Lottery Coalition filed an appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada at the end of 2025, and the outcome remained open through 2026. Alberta, building its own market, intervened in support of Ontario’s position — a signal that the liquidity question is being fought as a national issue, not just an Ontario one, and that a future Ontario–Alberta liquidity-sharing arrangement is a real possibility.

Alberta changes the map

Until 2026 Ontario was Canada’s only open, private-operator online market; the rest of the country runs on provincial-lottery monopolies alongside a tolerated offshore grey market. That is changing. Alberta passed the iGaming Alberta Act (Bill 48) in May 2025, creating the Alberta iGaming Corporation with the AGLC as regulator, and set a market launch for 13 July 2026 with more than 55 interested operator sites. Alberta’s model taxes at 20% of GGR and charges a CAD 50,000 application fee and a CAD 150,000 annual fee.

Two open markets, similar in design and physically adjacent, create obvious pressure toward shared liquidity and shared standards — which is precisely why Alberta chose to back Ontario before the Supreme Court.

Why it matters

Ontario’s third year demonstrates both the strength and the frontier of the conduct-and-manage model. The framework has proven durable and attractive to operators, but the pooled-liquidity litigation shows how much of the model’s ceiling depends on questions the courts, not the regulator, will decide. For operators and suppliers, Ontario remains the North American benchmark for a well-run open market; the strategic variable now is whether the Supreme Court preserves international liquidity and whether Ontario and Alberta converge into something closer to a shared Canadian market.

Cross-border teams tracking the Supreme Court timeline and Alberta’s launch alongside other North American developments can follow them in the iGaming regulatory tracker, while the wider conference and licensing calendar sits in the events calendar.

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