Ontario set its latest monthly record for gaming activity to kick off 2025, including the most profitable month of regulated sports betting in the province’s history.

iGaming Ontario’s (iGO) numbers for January 2025 show that Ontarians bet $7.84 billion on sports, online casino games and online poker last month. That is a tiny uptick of 0.24% from the record that had been set last month, and a handsome 31% year-over-year increase.

Gross gaming revenue, meanwhile, smashed the previous ceiling of $291 million taken in November 2024 by climbing to $328 million. Operators’ collective gross revenue has grown by 36% in one year and the January total was nearly 13% higher than the previous record high mark.

iGO reported there were 1.1 million active player accounts last month, the most ever and up from approximately 877,0000 this time last year.  Those players yielded an average revenue of almost $300, the highest since September 2024.

Ontario sports betting has never been so lucrative

Ontario’s market is heavily dominated by online casino in terms of both wagering activity and revenue, but January was the biggest month ever for licensed sportsbooks in the province.

After December’s results saw sports wagering handle climb 9% to $1.1 billion but sports betting GGR fall 28% to $39 million, betting platforms made a combined $91.9 million in sports betting GGR in January. That was up 133.8% month over month and 32.2% year over year and is 17.1% higher than the previous all time record for sports wagering revenue, set in November 2024.

That $91.9 in sports betting GGR came from just less than $1.2 billion in handle, up 20.7% year over year and just 3.6% month over month.

It will be interesting to see how Super Bowl LIX, which seems to have been highly profitable for sportsbooks compared to years past, will be reflected in Ontario’s February numbers.

Online casino still rules the roost, with 83% of total online gaming handle and 70% of total GGR, but sports betting’s revenue share grew from just 15% in December to 28% in January.

All-time, Ontario regulated online gaming has produced total GGR of more than $6.5 billion, around $4.7 billion of which has come from online casinos.

iGO now shares market performance reports every month, rather than just once a quarter, as well as historical data for every month back to when the market opened in April 2022. It told Canadian Gaming Business that the change “is the result of our decision to be more transparent by sharing aggregate revenue and market insight figures more frequently, and in a format that is easier to ingest and analyze.”