It’s not just the emergence of online sports betting that has transformed how people place wagers online in Canada; the far-reaching impacts are still being measured. I haven’t had time to catch my breath over the last decade; I’ve barely managed to keep up with the changes that are taking place in the industry.
As somebody who remembers the days before the digital revolution, sports betting was very different in the late 20th century—especially in Canada, where the sector was down the international pecking order compared to Australia and the UK.
To understand the intersection of eSports and traditional sports betting in Canada and the broader market, I will lay the foundation and explain why and how the Internet has become the leading platform to facilitate gambling markets. As it then continued to permeate other avenues of our lives, video gaming companies were able to develop technology that interconnected gamers who wanted to face off against each other, regardless of where they were in the world.
The natural conclusion and endgame for this market was the emergence of eSports. However, the unexpected global popularity of a variety of different professional video gaming markets has resulted in eSports betting markets providing an unexpected boost to the broader gaming sector and helping to bring a crossover appeal to gamblers who might not be aware of how eSports works or the sort of markets it entails.
Professional video gaming hasn’t even been around as long as digital sports betting. While big names and figures in both industries knew just how much of a game-changer the Internet would become once it could interconnect international markets, the extenuating factors and other successful elements of both industries have been an intriguing development, too.
I remember the excitement Microsoft and Sony generated when they first announced they had developed technology that could connect gamers worldwide. Between the late 2000s and the early 2010s, the potential for online video gaming capabilities became akin to a video game gold rush. It was a two-horse race between PlayStation and Xbox to see which one could get ahead and offer the best facility for those looking to connect and play against their friends or competitors.
When online video gaming became massive news in the late 2000s, games like Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto brought in the most considerable revenue for gaming companies. GTA V still generates hundreds of millions annually through its online facility. This explains why they took so long to release the highly anticipated GTA 6—and why that game is set to break all sorts of records when it hits our shelves at some point in 2025.
Without stating the obvious, GTA didn’t have the same scope for single or team-play competition in the way first-person shooter games do. The most popular eSports leagues currently are League Of Legends, Fortnite, and Counter-Strike 2, all of which excel at bringing together emphasis on team player games but deliver a product that people want to watch as spectators.
Professional video gaming and sports betting in Canada exemplify the current landscape of the wider global appetite for both sectors. In 2022, landmark changes in legislation meant that prominent states in Canada, like Ontario, allowed digital sports betting companies to legally set up within their provincial lines.
While it might have taken slightly longer than some other markets, such as the UK, it’s quickly spiralled into a multi-billion-dollar tax base, and other provinces and territories are keen to follow suit.
If I’m going to explain how eSports and traditional sports betting markets in Canada have intersected over the years, there’s no better way to do this than to highlight how mobile-centric our world has become.
Whether looking at the Canadian market or the US, UK, or Australian market, mobile apps and placing a bet on a mobile device are the dominant forms people use to wager their bets online. While there’s still some demand for websites and land-based providers, this mirrors how our world has moved toward our phones. With the demand for people to watch eSports shifting towards tablets, the two sectors have inevitably crossed paths.
I’m not going to deny that there have been some startling innovations and developments in sports betting and video gaming over the last few decades. However, both have also benefited from the timing and rise of their respective sectors.
No conclusive data measures the growth or demographics of the eSports industry in Canada. However, over 15 million gamers, and at least 1.5 million people, tune in to YouTube and Twitch to watch the top eSports tournaments and matches. I’d say, from a personal point of view, that these are the best measuring tools.
Sites like YouTube are the new global form of media, and their finger is a lot closer to the pulse of society and societal trends than traditional media such as TV, which continues to struggle in a changing landscape.
As with any professional competition or tournament, anything that can generate sustained interest and millions of domestic audience numbers will attract a betting market. It also helps that a number of the top eSports names hail from Canada, which, of course, helps buoy its popularity.
Professional video gaming markets positioned themselves as legitimate betting markets simply through the numbers they generated. In Asia, for instance, the market has grown to such an extent that some individual tournament games take place in stadiums, and the emergence of competitions like The International for Dota 2 has resulted in upwards of $40 million in prize pools.
Any growing competitive market that involves professional competition will invariably attract betting markets. There are much smaller sports for which you can find markets on sports betting platforms, so the idea that video games wouldn’t be able to find similar success or appeal to more traditional sports bettors was way off the mark.
The level of skill it takes to rise to the top of eSports is just as challenging as any professional sport. There are pools of millions of gamers who have spent countless hours trying to refine their skills on these games, and none of them come close to the sort of level that many of these eSports play at—herein lies the uniqueness and appeal of it as a spectator sport and gambling market.
In many ways, it mirrors traditional sports betting; they’re not really standalone markets. It’s a professional competition and requires an elite skill level to play it at a world-class stage level, so while some more traditional sports betting fans might hold their nose up at the idea, once you drill into the foundation of both and understand the sort of criteria that influences them (as I have, hopefully, taught you about today), it becomes clear that they have a lot more in common.
In defence of the industry, I don’t recall many betting analysts and experts questioning whether there was a big enough gambling market for professional video gaming. Although traditional sports might appeal to a different demographic, especially in Canada, betting platforms would not invest the time and cost to provide a facility for people to bet on professional video gaming if there wasn’t a clear appetite for it.
In my opinion, I’d say this is arguably more circumstantial than based on any sort of pre-determined plans within the industry. Video gaming companies probably wouldn’t have anticipated that they’d go from having consoles that couldn’t connect to the Internet to professional video gaming tournaments selling out stadiums and generating tens of millions of dollars in a prize pool.
There are far more similarities than differences between betting on video gaming and traditional sports betting markets. For me, the factors that really helped interlock them for Canadian gamers stem from the more comprehensive global attitude of smartphones and interconnectivity, the success of Canadian eSports players and teams, and the transparent market that exists to watch the best go head-to-head, regardless of the type of video game it is.
Traditional sports betting is still the dominant force, and sports like ice hockey and soccer still attract far higher numbers of viewers and bets than eSports in Canada. One thing the latter does have in its favour, though, is how new it is.
Ten years ago, there were no sports betting markets for eSports, whereas traditional ones have been around—at least in specific formats in some parts of the world—for 50 or 60 years. So, if I take a more holistic and objective approach, I’d expect to see eSports close the gap on traditional markets, but it’d take a lot for them to surpass it in Canada, even with the growing praise the sector is getting.
By its very design, online gambling breaks down sports betting traditions and continues to seek new, groundbreaking markets in the digital age. Due to eSports’ global nature and the growing number of countries offering sports betting facilities, it’d be far more surprising not to see eSports and traditional betting markets intersect.
Rowan Fisher-Shotton has been a sports betting journalist for 6 years, specialising in major league North American sports like the NBA, NFL, and NCAA. His insight into emerging trends, coupled with his deep analysis, has made him a recognisable and respected name within the iGaming community. He now works as a prolific contributor and reviewer with GambleOntario, a major affiliate platform, amongst other freelancing work.
