Each week, Canada Sports Betting recaps all the top sports betting and iGaming news in Canada and highlights upcoming events.
Our top stories this week
- iGaming Ontario’s Latest Quarterly Market Report Reveals Steady Revenue Growth
- CFL Week 8 Odds, Betting Preview: Alouettes’ Fajardo Placed On Six-Game Injured List
- 2024 Paris Summer Olympics Tennis Odds: Four Canadians In Hunt For Men’s, Women’s Medals
- 2024 Paris Summer Olympics Odds: Three Canadian Longshots To Consider
- 2024-25 NHL Schedule Analysis: Strength Of Schedule Breakdown
- 2024 Paris Summer Olympics Golf Odds: Conners, Henderson Leading Canada’s Quartet On The Links
- 2024 Paris Summer Olympics Odds: Andre De Grasse Ready To Reignite Hope
- 2024 Paris Summer Olympics Odds: USA’s Richardson, Jamaica’s Jackson To Battle For World’s Fastest Woman Honours
- 2024 Paris Olympics Odds: Canadian Women Ready To Make A Splash In Swimming Events
- Will Vladimir Guerrero Jr. Be Traded This Season? You Can Bet On It
- 2024 Paris Summer Olympics Medal Count Handicapping: A Look At Canada’s Best Odds For Gold
- Predicting Points: Over/Under Projections On Canadian NHL Teams For The 2024-25 Regular Season
Event of the week
2024 Summer Olympic Games – July 26 – Aug. 11
Sports bettors typically don’t have a wide variety of sports to bet on over the summer months, but this year has been exceptional with the EURO and Copa soccer tournaments, and now the Summer Olympic Games in Paris.
The Games officially open on Friday, although some competitions, like soccer, are already underway. For the next few weeks, bettors will have the chance to dabble in wagering on some sporting events they typically wouldn’t bet on, and Canada Sports Betting is here to help you handicap! Check out some of the links above, and be sure to check back over the next few weeks for more Olympic betting content.
Most online sportsbooks are projecting Canada to earn somewhere between 20-22 medals at these Games , with a line somewhere around 5.5 for the number of gold medals.
Enjoy the Games, and be sure to expand your betting horizons with a few fun wagers on some of the lesser-known events.
Microsoft global outage wreaks havoc on operators
A global Microsoft outage last Friday, which is being tabbed as the biggest tech failure in history by some analysts, wreaked havoc on the online gambling world, and a number of other industries, effectively shutting down a number of sites across the globe and here in Canada.
The outage also interrupted airline operations, banking services, and major IT operations, all thanks to a bug found during an update to the Microsoft servers conducted by cybersecurity company CrowdStrike.
Two Entain brands, Sports Interaction and BetMGM, experienced significant issues due to their reliance on Microsoft systems, putting their respective websites out of service for roughly 24 hours. Other sportsbooks accessible to Canadians were also impacted to varying degrees.
Operations have returned to normal at both Sports Interaction and BetMGM, and both operators apologized to users for the inconvenience.
In a February business update, BetMGM claimed to have a 22% igaming market share in the province of Ontario, making it one of the preferred sportsbooks of Ontarians. Sports Interaction is also one of the most recognized online sportsbooks across Canada.
Earlier this week, Entain announced Gavin Isaacs as the company’s new CEO, effective September 2. Isaacs boasts over 25 years of experience in the gaming and lottery industries, having previously worked in various roles for Scientific Games Corporation, DraftKings Inc., SB Tech, Bally Technologies Inc., and Aristocrat Technologies.
According to insurer Parametrix, the outage cost Fortune 500 companies an estimated $5.4 billion (USD) in losses.
Play Alberta partners with games supplier Aristocrat
Play Alberta, Alberta‘s only regulated gambling website will be the first provincial iGaming operator to offer Aristocrat games online in Canada, it announced earlier this week.
Aristocrat Gaming, the No. 1 supplier of slot terminals within Alberta’s land-based casinos, will now be bringing its suite of games online for players in the province. Some of the popular titles being added include Buffalo, Wicked Winnings II, 7 Hot 7, and Gold Stacks 88 Lunar Festival.
“Adding another world-renowned games provider to PlayAlberta.ca only helps bolster entertainment offerings for our players. Aristocrat Gaming has an established presence globally, and bringing their features to Alberta will continue to enhance the province’s only regulated gambling website while encouraging Albertans to use a safe-and-secure iGaming destination,” said Alberta Gaming, Liquor & Cannabis Executive Vice President of Business Development, Steve Lautischer.
The improvements to the crown corporation’s online betting platform come on the heels of a major announcement that the Alberta government plans to adopt a regulated online gambling model, like Ontario, in the coming months. Soon, Play Alberta will lose its monopoly in the legal online gambling space and will have to compete with a plethora of private operators.
PlayAlberta.ca generated $235 million in net sales, an increase of more than $42 million from 2022-23. That number contributes to the $1.5 billion in total gaming revenue that’s sent to Alberta’s General Revenue Fund and supports programs and services that Albertans rely on every day.
