The Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation (OLG)’s full-year report suggests that the lottery corporation captured one-fifth of Ontario’s regulated online gambling activity in the 2023-24 fiscal year.
Earlier this month, OLG published its full-year figures for the FY that ended on March 31, 2024. The FY report showed that OLG’s digital operations grew year-over-year despite immense competition from commercial operators.
The crown corporation reported total gross online gaming and sports betting revenue of $630 million, up 12% from the $561 million it posted last year. CEO Duncan Hannay noted that monthly average player counts rose by 11% year-over-year.
Ontario’s online gaming and betting revenue is reported by two separate entities: OLG and iGaming Ontario (iGO), which discloses the official numbers for the commercial regulated market that consists of 51 operators and 83 websites at the most recent count. iGO released its own year-end report way back in April, posting $2.4 billion in gross gaming revenue.
Total Ontario online gambling hits $5 billion
Combining the OLG and iGO reports for the period from April 1, 2023 to March 31, 2024 suggests that total revenue for the second FY since the province welcomed commercial operators into the fray was just over $3 billion. That represents a 54.5% increase on year one’s total of just short of $2 billion. Ontario’s regulated online gambling market opened three days after the start of the 2022-23 FY, on April 4, 2022.
Overall, regulated Ontario online gambling has now yielded fractionally less than $5 billion in gross gaming revenue through two years from April 1, 2022 to March 31, 2024, of which OLG has contributed $1.2 billion.
It also means that, taking the numbers at face value, OLG held down 20.8% of Ontario’s regulated online gambling market in FY 2023-24 in terms of total gross revenue. That doesn’t take into account any unregulated grey market gambling activity that may still be going on despite the plethora of licensed options.
In total, OLG has now contributed a net profit of $634 million to the Ontario government over the last two fiscal years ($302 million in FY 2023-24, $332 million in FY 2023-24).
While OLG grows online, overall gaming proceeds slide
While the OLG appears to be acquitting itself fairly well online, its digital gaming, which includes online casino-style games and sports betting products as well as online lottery sales, makes up just 13.4% of its total revenue. Retail lottery sales and land-based gaming (casinos and charitable gaming) each represent a far bigger slice.
The OLG’s overall gaming revenue slipped 6.5% year-over-year to $4.7 billion as it suffered a marked drop in the retail lottery sector. Its lottery revenue dropped 5.5% to $1.76 billion last year, while net profits from lottery sales suffered twice as large a drop, at 11%.
Land-based gaming revenue stayed flat at $1.98 billion compared to $1.96 billion in 2022-23, but casino gaming profit to the province was down 3%.
“Despite significant challenges to the business this year, including the delayed opening of a casino development in Toronto and fewer high value lottery jackpots, we were pleased to see OLG deliver a strong financial return to the province in fiscal 2023-24,” wrote OLG Chair Jim Warren in the report.