Ontario Sportsbooks Post a Record June, Riding the World Cup Wave

Ontario’s regulated sports betting market just had its biggest June on record. The latest figures from iGaming Ontario show that bettors placed sports wagers totalling approximately CA$1.03 billion in June 2026 across more than 1.3 million active player accounts. That’s up 35% from the CA$768 million wagered in June 2025, and about 6% higher than May 2026.

This marks the eighth month within the past year where Ontario’s sports betting has cleared the CA$1 billion mark in total wagers. The first time was in November 2023, about 19 months after its competitive online gambling market opened in April 2022. At that time, sports wagers totalled CA$1.04 billion.

Why June Was Different

The summer is usually a quiet stretch for sportsbooks. That’s because the NFL, NHL, and NBA are all in between seasons. This year was different though. The FIFA World Cup, which ran from June 11 through July 19, featured 48 teams across 104 matches, delivering plenty of betting action for licensed sports betting sites in Ontario.

Canada wasn’t just watching from home this time. Toronto and Vancouver each hosted World Cup matches for the first time in the tournament’s history — six games in Toronto and seven in Vancouver, including a lopsided 6-0 Canada win over Qatar on July 18.

Canada’s men’s team also reached the knockout round for the first time ever. That home-soil excitement showed up directly in the numbers: sports wagering alone generated CA$78.6 million in gaming revenue for the month, roughly a fifth of Ontario’s entire iGaming revenue, even though that total actually slipped about 3% from May’s CA$81.3 million.

Casinos and Poker Tell a Different Story

Despite the growth in the online sports betting segment, it’s still just a small slice of Ontario’s gambling landscape.

Online casino games are the other part. Records show this segment brought in about CA$8.3 billion in total wagers during June, which equals 88% of the total market handle. As such, it generated about CA$316.8 million in revenue, almost four-fifths of the province’s entire iGaming take.

Worth noting is that this represents a slight step down from May, which was the biggest casino month on record at roughly CA$8.37 billion. Nonetheless, June’s total was still about 30% above the same month a year earlier.

Peer-to-peer poker is another part of the Ontario iGaming scene. Experiencing a tougher stretch, players wagered a total of CA$126 million, bringing in just a little over CA$5.2 million in revenue, down 4% from May.

Poker’s slide goes back further than this year. When Ontario’s regulated market launched in 2022, operators were required to keep player pools confined within the province. This, in turn, cut local players off from the much larger international tables they’d previously had access to. A Supreme Court of Canada decision on shared player pools, still pending, could eventually reopen that door. But for now, poker remains a small and shrinking corner of the market.

Does the Boost Stick Around?

The bigger question is what comes next. The World Cup wrapped on July 19 with Spain edging Argentina 1-0 in the final. This was reportedly the most heavily bet soccer match in history. At present, operators and regulators are watching to see whether June’s numbers were a one-time bump or the start of something longer-lasting.

History leans toward caution. Major single events like this typically produce a short-lived surge, since much of the volume comes from casual bettors who only showed up for the big event and move on once it’s over. If that pattern repeats, expect Ontario’s totals to cool off through August and September, even as NFL and NHL preseason games start filling the calendar.

There’s a case for optimism, though. A wave of bettors who signed up specifically for the World Cup are still in the system, with saved payment methods, installed apps, and — for some — a first win already banked. Sportsbooks are likely to lean hard on promotions aimed at turning those one-time users into regulars who keep betting into football season. The buzz generated by actually hosting matches in Toronto and Vancouver could also give Ontario’s soccer betting market staying power it didn’t have before.

The real answer will show up in the next couple of monthly reports. Should revenue snap back to pre-June levels, the World Cup symbolizes a mere spike. But should it hold well above pre-tournament levels, that’s a sign operators turned a month of hype into a lasting boost to their customer base. For now, we wait to see.