TORONTO – Canada’s casinos and gambling association are accusing the Senate of stalling over a sports betting bill still in third reading more than 15 months after being passed by Parliament.
Bill C-290 would let people bet on the outcome of a single event as opposed to parlay bets, which place bets on the outcome of multiple events.
“Continued shameful inaction and procedural delaying tactics by the Senators only serves to fuel organized crime and illegal offshore bookmakers, because they are the ones who profit from illegal single-event wagering,” Bill Rutsey, CEO of the Canadian Gaming Association in a statement.
“What we are witnessing, unfortunately, is an unaccountable Senate that prefers to debate the morality of gaming and not the dangerous status quo that they are in no hurry to fix.”
Canadians often place bets on individual sports events outside of controlled betting systems, opening themselves up to fraud and other forms of illegal activity, Rutsey said.
“We watch more money leave the country, which means more Canadians are engaging in risky and unsafe behaviour.”
The association says Canadians who want to bet on single games still do so: They just turn to offshore bookmaker services, creating offshore accounts to deposit funds into. These funds are then transferred to a sportsbook, where other users can receive funds based on their bets.
“The type of betting this bill will allow is already happening, but it is happening underground,” Liberal senator Terry Mercer said in a debate earlier this month. “The argument that single-sport betting would still continue illegally is simply untrue, because it is not sustainable and, more importantly, not profitable. Billions of dollars are being lost to this illegal betting industry.”
But the sporting giants behind those events feel differently: The National Hockey League claims the bill would open up a “Pandora’s box” of potential game fixes.
“Such wagering poses perhaps the greatest threat to the integrity of our games, since it is far easier to engage in ‘match fixing’ in order to win single-game bets than it is in cases of parlay betting,” NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly wrote in an open letter to the Senate.
The MLB is also opposed. “When gambling is permitted on team sports, winning the bet may become more important than winning the game; the point spread or the number of runs scored may overshadow the game’s outcome and the intricacies of play,” Blue Jays president and CEO Paul Beeston said when the bill was first introduced to the Senate last year.
The bill was passed by Parliament last year but got stalled in the Senate, which sent it back to committee last May.
“It kind of flew through the House without a great deal of scrutiny,” Conservative Sen. Linda Frum told the CBC last fall.
Some claim that the economic benefits of passing this amendment means leverage over American casinos who don’t allow single-event wagers.
“The idea is you could put together a package on Final Four weekend, the World Series, etc. and get Americans to return to Canadian casinos because they can do single-event sports betting instead of multi-event,” Riseley Gaming Inc. CEO Jim Warren said.
“It’s more to ensure the border casinos have something to compete with that their American counterparts don’t have to offer.”
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