As New Jersey prepares for its next court hearing on Wednesday over its efforts to legalize sports betting, gaming officials in Canada are urging lawmakers to vote on a bill legalizing Las Vegas-style sports books.
A bill introduced almost two years ago would allow Canadians to wager on a single sporting event at a time. It’s also seen as way to draw U.S. gamblers to casinos just across the border from cities such as Detroit or Niagara Falls, N.Y.
Canada offers a sports lottery in which bettors can parlay three or more games, but single-game betting is illegal under the Canadian criminal code.
“We are like Delaware, which offers parlay cards for sports betting,” Paul Burns, vice president of public affairs with the Toronto-based Canadian Gaming Association, said in a phone interview. “Every sports bettor knows it’s not a great bet.”
Burns said legalizing sports betting would discourage Canadian bettors from wagering on National Hockey League or National Football League games offshore or with illegal bookmakers.
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Toronto’s my adopted hometown. I’ve lived here off and on since I came to the University of Toronto for law school in 1993. Toronto has a lot going for it: great restaurants for a city of its size, wonderful family activities and amenities available, and mostly a clean and highly liveable place. It also has horrible traffic and transit and decaying infrastructure. It’s not Chicago or New York City, which really bothers Canadians in general and Torontonians in particular, but all in all, it’s a wonderful place to live.
One thing that Toronto doesn’t have is a casino. We have Woodbine Racetrack out in Etobicoke, which has some slots, we have gaming during the CNE in late summer, and we have a thriving underground poker scene. The casinos in Niagara Falls and Rama aren’t too far. Internet gaming is everywhere, and heavily advertised. But Toronto doesn’t have a full-fledged resort casino like those in Vegas, or even like the casion property in Montreal.
I think odds are good that that will soon change. It’s by no means a certainty, but the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation (OLG — the provincial lottery monopoly) wants to develop a casino in downtown Toronto. This is a creating a big and growing debate here. In spite of the attention being generated by the ‘no’ side, I don’t think that Toronto will pass on the economic benefits that a casino property in the city stands to generate, nor do I think that it should pass on it.
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