Online gaming has come a long way since its early days in the mid-1990s, and the sector is virtually unrecognizable from those days when games were limited and online payments were not possible.
Over the last quarter-century, thanks to technological developments and legislative changes, the online gaming sector has become a major global provider of revenue and opportunities, and Canada has been a part of that global expansion.
In 2023, i-Gaming is huge in Canada and, as well as the hundreds of online casino platforms, there are thousands of other sites providing guides and information. These sites help you try to find unbiased opinions about the online i-Gaming industry, including which are the best online casinos and which payment methods you should use for your casino deposits.
So, how did we get here? To understand the development of the modern online gaming sector in Canada, we need to go back in time.
Legality and Illegality
We sometimes assume that gambling was always illegal and only started to become legal in the 20thcentury, but that is not the case in most nations, and Canada is no exception.
In fact, up until the 1890s, gambling was part of Canadian life. However, in 1892, driven by religious and moral concerns, legislators outlawed all forms of gambling. Predictably, this meant that organized crime stepped in to provide gambling outlets. The problem was so significant that in 1900, the laws were relaxed to allow raffles and bingo games, and then betting on horses in 1910.
Eventually, in 1969, Canada legalized lotteries on both national and federal levels. A year later, it allowed provinces to oversee their own gambling rules, with the result that gambling spread across the nation, and the first land-based casinos were established in 1989 and 1993.
Technology Arrives
In the Canadian gambling sector, as with every other sector of the economy, the Internet changed everything. Technology had already become more prevalent in Canadian gambling in the form of lottery and bingo terminals, but in 2004, British Columbia began allowing people to purchase lottery tickets online through its official site and later added casino games, bingo, and poker.
Online i-Gaming quickly became popular and spread to Quebec, Alberta, Manitoba, and Ontario, and the Atlantic Lottery Corporation began to offer online lottery and bingo in the Maritime provinces.
This rapid development of online casino gaming caught legislators off guard in Canada, as it has in many other nations. The result was a gaming sector in which Canadian residents were easily able to play on offshore casino sites, thanks to ever-faster and more effective Internet technology. However, private companies were not allowed to operate online gaming sites from within Canada’s borders.
Mobile Revolution
The next step in the evolution of i-Gaming in Canada was the arrival of mobile gaming. The development of the smartphone made mobile gaming realistic, and as new mobile technology rolled out, players began to embrace the convenience of playing casino games on their mobile devices.
By the 2010s, mobile gaming was increasing rapidly, and by the 2020s, more people in Canada were playing games on their mobiles than on their desktops. Initially, this was achieved through downloadable apps, but the arrival of HTML5 technology meant that online casinos could create sites that opened easily in a mobile browser, whatever device or operating system a player was using.
New Developments
As technology changes and opens up new frontiers and possibilities, the i-Gaming sector has been changing, too. An increasing number of Canadian online casino customers are able to make deposits and transactions in cryptocurrencies, such as Litecoin and Bitcoin, which offer the benefits of fast transactions and increased security and anonymity.
Technology has also helped to develop a version of online casino gaming that goes some way toward replicating the real-world casino experience. Live dealer casino games offer players the ability to interact with real dealers and, in some cases, with other casino players. This type of game is streamed live from dedicated studios that are designed to look like real-world casinos and provide interactive and immersive experiences that regular online casino games can’t equal.
Conclusion
Canada’s i-Gaming sector is thriving, thanks to a combination of technological innovation and liberalizing measures by lawmakers. In the next few years, we can expect to see developments on both fronts, notably in the form of new online casino tech, such as VR and AR. This means that the i-gaming experience will continue to evolve for Canadian casino gamers.