Is Canadian Gambling Legislation Backed by Enough Data?

It is incredible to see the Canadian online casino and betting industry coming into its own. No longer considered the market to target if you can’t get into the United States, Ontario showed the world that Canada is a rich and vital market with excellent regulation and an ability to balance profitability with player protection.

However, with such rapid growth and success comes scrutiny, and studies of Ontario’s casino model could show some cracks that need to be addressed before they become far more consequential problems.

CGA Releases Policy Review Report

The Canadian Gaming Association (CGA) released the results of its study of Ontario’s Alcohol and Gaming Commission (AGCO) and how it has managed the market's newfound success and addressed the micro-adjustments needed to ensure the framework's stability and efficacy in the face of new data.

To ensure the utmost professionalism and remove any biases, the CGA funded the review of the market, hiring GP Consulting, owned and operated by Dr Kahlil Philander, to deliver a review of the market based on:

1. A review of academic, peer-reviewed publications from the last 10 years on gambling advertising and its impact on consumers’ gambling intentions and behaviours and
2. Review existing regulatory measures in Ontario and compare those rules to other leading jurisdictions.

The research firm followed an accepted review practice known as ‘rapid reviews’ which meant that the team of researchers gathered 1,298 documents from the past decade and filtered them down to a total of 41 studies (34 individual studies and 7 literature reviews) that covered the same data and core evaluation criteria of its peers.

As part of the Executive Summary, the report notes the following:

“In aggregate, our findings highlight a distinct trend: regulatory policies are evolving at a faster rate than the accompanying evidence base. We caution that this misalignment may lead to regulations that are either overreaching relative to their intended goals or insufficiently nuanced, thus failing to address the subtleties of modern gambling advertising practices.”

The document does create a caveat for the reality that, in some cases, policy decisions can vary from the outcome demanded by empirical evidence when it best serves the needs of the Canadian gambling community, but it urges that online casino and sports betting policymakers must be informed when "evidence ends, and social preferences begin."

Advice on Addressing Data Limitations

Given that licensed online casinos and sports betting are in their infancy in Canada, which means there is very little local data available to guide the Gambling Authority, the CGA report makes the following suggestions for better controls:

1. Responsible Gambling Advertising: Promoting responsible gambling messages through ads can help correct misconceptions and reduce harmful behaviour, even if the research in this area is unclear.
2. Consistent Measurement of Exposure and Outcomes: Measuring exposure and outcomes consistently is difficult, so frameworks should be created to ensure reliable reporting. This consistency would enable comprehensive analyses and improve reporting quality.
3. Ecological Validity: Research should be conducted in real-world settings, such as online gambling platforms, which can provide valuable insights similar to those in e-commerce and digital marketing.
4. Address Cultural Bias: Current research lacks participant diversity,  w        essential for places like Ontario, where online gambling is new. Findings from established markets should not be assumed to apply to less mature ones.
5. Understanding Direction of Causality: Most existing studies are cross-sectional and can only show a link between advertising and gambling outcomes, not prove that one causes the other.
6. Objective Measurement: Future research needs to find objective ways to measure advertising exposure and behavioural outcomes, as measuring these through broader media can be challenging.
7. Theoretical Underpinnings: Merging established theories from gambling and advertising with long-term studies could illuminate causal pathways and how advertising interacts with various factors contributing to gambling-related harm.
8. Living Systematic Reviews: Living reviews differ from traditional ones because they are regularly updated to reflect the newest research. This makes them essential for keeping abreast of an ever-evolving tech-focused industry like online gambling.

The report proposes that following this template when gathering data on the market and its impact on the community will also naturally inform the ideal policy creation or amendments needed to ensure necessary changes with as little friction as possible.

Rigorous Onboarding Process

To avoid having to backtrack, remove licenses and spend time in court dealing with ill-intentioned licensees, the research team devised an onboarding process that includes input from “entities at the federal and provincial levels and both public and private institutions”. In its estimations, this means an opening accreditation-worthiness review by the Responsible Gambling Council (RGC), adherence to the Canadian Code of Advertising Standards as laid out by AdStandards Canada, and the evaluation and preclearance approval of all radio and television media based on the thinkTV Clearance program.

These standards would be intrinsic to a five-layer gambling rule set, which would cover Good taste and Canadian morals, no inducement of youth to gamble, the prohibition of sports stars and celebrity ambassadors, no offer or inducements in ads, and holding operators to account for the actions for their affiliates.

The diagram below shows the process operators would follow in this more structured and broad-based approach to onboarding new casinos and betting sites.