When sports betting becomes a problem
The Canadian sports-betting story is not a different story from the American one — it is the same story, on a slightly delayed timer, with cleaner data because Ontario regulates centrally. Ben Kaplan’s Globe and Mail piece is a useful set of post-legalization numbers to drop on anyone who still thinks ‘regulate and tax’ is automatically harm-reducing. Ontario alone took $82.7 billion in online wagers in 2024–25 — a 32% year-over-year jump. Calls to the provincial addictions helpline from males aged 15–24 climbed more than 300% after legalization. Among online gamblers aged 18–29, 69.4% met the clinical criteria for problem gambling. That last number is not a typo. Two thirds.
The line worth pulling out is from Aldo Infuso of Gamblers Anonymous Toronto, reflecting on a 21-year addiction: ‘It grips you. It’s an insidious, baffling disease.’ Anyone who’s sat in a meeting recognizes that vocabulary immediately. ‘Insidious, baffling’ comes straight out of the AA literature lineage and it lands the same way for compulsive gambling: you don’t see it coming, and once it has you, the most rational explanations of how to stop don’t actually work. The clinicians Kaplan quotes — Andrew Kim at Toronto Metropolitan, David Hodgins at Calgary — both come back to the same warning sign: gambling to escape, forget, or feel better is the corollary that turns recreational play into the disorder.
What we keep noting in our coverage of young-male U.S. sports-betting harm and the bankruptcy follow-on is the same pattern Kaplan is describing in Canada. The age curve is identical. The demographic concentration is identical. The helpline trajectory after legalization is identical. Two countries, two regulatory regimes, one product, one outcome — and the outcome is showing up clinically before the policy debates have even gotten warm. If you’re Canadian and reading this: GAmeetingFinder lists virtual meetings worldwide and Canadian rooms are well-represented. Aldo’s line is also our line. The disease is insidious. Catching it early matters. Walking into a meeting — even a virtual one, even tonight — is how that catch happens.