Legal online casino and sports wagering handle in the Canadian province of Ontario totaled $14 billion CAD ($10.62 billion USD) for the period spanning April 1 to June 30, according to a release Thursday by iGaming Ontario.
The agency also provided full fiscal year 2022-23 figures dating from the launch of online wagering on April 4, 2022, through March 31, 2023. Total handle for that period was $35.6 billion CAD ($27.01 billion USD), with combined revenue spanning the disciplines of internet casino gaming, sports wagering, and poker totaling approximately $1.4 billion CAD ($1.06 billion USD).
Revenue for the first quarter of FY 2023-24 totaled $545 million CAD ($413.4 million USD), which puts it on a pace to double revenue totals from FY 2022-23. Handle was up 0.7% compared to the previous quarter, while revenue increased by 3.6%.
Online casino is where it’s at
The iCasino suite, excluding poker, accounted for approximately 83% of all online wagering last quarter, with $392 million CAD ($297.4 million USD) in revenue generated from the $11.6 billion CAD handle ($8.8 billion USD). That share is an increase from FY 2022-23, when the $27.6 billion in online casino handle accounted for 77.5% of all online wagering activity.
IGaming Ontario provided FY2022-23 breakouts for the traditional iCasino suite of games, and table games handle edged out slots by a margin of 52% to 48%. Canadians showed a clear preference for live-dealer table games over computerized ones, as nearly one-third of total iGaming casino handle came from live-dealer games, compared to 19% for computer-based dealers.
Northern sports bettors hold their own
The immediate standout statistic from the sports wagering breakout is a hold of approximately 6.9% for Canadian operators, as revenue totaled $138 million CAD ($104.7 million USD) from $2 billion CAD ($1.52 billion USD) handle. Their American counterparts have fashioned a hold of nearly 10.2% — 47.4% higher — from close to $20.5 billion handle in the same period among all states that have reported figures to date.
It was a strong start to the fiscal year, however, as Canadian sportsbooks were ahead of their pace for FY 2022-23, when they finished with a 6.2% hold to claim $433 million in revenue ($328.5 million USD) from approximately $7 billion CAD ($5.3 billion USD) worth of accepted wagers for the first 12 months that included single-event wagering.
Basketball was Canada’s most popular sport for wagering in terms of handle at 29% in FY 2022-2023, followed by soccer at 15% and football at 13%. Hockey was fourth at 9%, but it bears mentioning that sports wagering began in the final two weeks of the 2021-22 NHL regular season and would likely show a notable year-over-year increase if such figures are published.
The amount of users with active accounts last quarter totaled roughly 920,000, with the average spend per active player account totaling $197 CAD ($149.55 USD). That was a decline of 8.9% among active users from the fourth quarter of FY 2022-23, but the average spend per active account ticked 13.2% higher from $174 CAD ($132.10 USD). Overall, there were approximately 1.65 million active player accounts in Ontario in FY 2022-23, with an average spend of $70 CAD ($53.14 USD).
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