Globe editorial: Time to ante up on sports betting ads

Forgive us for disrespecting an old Rodney Dangerfield joke, but we went to a betting parlour the other night and a hockey game broke out.

Such is the state of advertising for sports betting in Canada. Anyone who has recently watched a National Hockey League game, or any other professional sport, gets the joke.

Viewers’ synapses are inundated with ads for online betting during sports broadcasts. The CBC teamed up with researchers in Britain this year and found that there are almost three pro-gambling messages per minute during games.

This is happening even as evidence shows that problem gambling is harming hundreds of thousands of adults and children around the world, including Canada.

Other countries – Britain, Spain, France, Belgium, Italy and Australia – have taken concrete steps to limit advertising for online gambling. But in Canada’s multijurisdictional regulatory environment, the rules are so inconsistent as to be irrelevant.

Fixing that will require a federal framework for sports betting advertising of the kind that already exists for alcohol and tobacco. Which is why the House of Commons must quickly enact a Senate bill to create just such a framework.

Bill S-269 has been passed at third reading in both houses of Parliament but is being held up, like other bills, by the political shenanigans of the Trudeau government.

With the House at a standstill over the government’s refusal to comply with an order to produce documents related to the Sustainable Development Technology Canada scandal, the bill is at risk of not making it across the finish line.

There are only 22 more sitting days to enact it before the House rises for the holidays. If the Liberals needed another reason to bow to the inevitable and do what the House ordered them to do, making Bill S-269 into law is a good one.

Every day the urgent need to address the issue of sports betting advertising goes unheeded will harm Canadians.

Ottawa decriminalized single-event sports betting in Canada in 2021. The federal government’s stated goal at the time was to take betting on the outcome of a single game, or on various events within a single game (such as who scores first), out of the hands of “a black market that evaded taxes and directed funds to organized crime.”

The change was also supposed to let bettors operate in a “regulated and safe environment, at the discretion of the provinces and territories.”

But that environment is regulated inconsistently, with different rules in different provinces, and it can in no way be considered safe for children or for people with gambling addictions to watch a hockey game on Saturday night and be exposed to relentless pro-gambling messaging.

The rush of companies into the online gambling space (there were 49 different gambling companies operating 72 different gambling websites in Ontario alone in December, 2023) has resulted in a glut of advertising extolling the ease of making bets on a smartphone.

The participation of hockey players in some advertising, combined with sponsored segments during game broadcasts devoted to the odds, have contributed to the normalization of gambling.

Marty Deacon, the Ontario senator who tabled Bill S-269, said last week that 7 per cent of Canadians already meet the criteria for problem gambling, and that the rates are even higher among younger Canadians aged 18 to 34, reaching 15 per cent.

Her bill gives Ottawa a year to negotiate national standards for advertising with the provinces and territories, and to develop a plan for implementing those standards consistently across the country.

The framework would be similar to rules for alcohol, which regulate the content, message, location and timing of booze advertising, and to prohibit associating booze with social status or with the idea that drinking is necessary for the enjoyment of an event, among other things.

Canada is lucky in one way. Other countries that legalized sports betting long before this one, such as Britain, have learned the hard way that unregulated advertising is an invitation to widespread problem gambling, and have had to correct course.

We are still new to the game and have the opportunity to get it right. The MPs in the House need to make sure they don’t blow this chance, and enact Bill S-269 before Christmas.