Is horse racing becoming more popular on online betting sites?

Horse racing has been inextricably linked with betting since time immemorial, or so it would seem. The sport stretches back centuries and is one of the staples of sports scenes across the world, from the massive industries in the UK and Ireland, to Australia, the USA and of course Canada. 

In April 2022 a new era of online sports betting was ushered in with the launch of iGaming Ontario which set out a regulated, organised environment for players to engage with. Casino games and online sports betting suddenly had a new lease of life in the province, as Ontarians no longer had to settle for unregulated offshore options to play at.

Sports betting has now become a major revenue stream for Ontario, as shown in the numbers from the financial year of April 1st, 2023 to March 31st, 2024. $10 billion was wagered on sports during the financial year, out of a total of approximately $52 billion in revenue from online gambling in Ontario. 

Online horse racing betting isn’t as widespread in Canada as other sports, but that hasn’t tempered the demand for it. 

Why Horse Racing Betting Is Popular

There is a special relationship between betting and horse racing. It’s a simple sport, where the quickest horse wins. But under the hood, it is also a lot more nuanced, with track conditions, race grades, distances, jockey form and a lot of other statistics to put to work to make good selections. The balance of skill and strategy is a huge factor in the appeal of horse racing betting.

Another popular aspect of horse racing betting is that bettors get a quick turnover of results. Waiting for the result of a horse race that may last three minutes, is a lot different from waiting for a Canadian Football League game to run its course. It’s much faster-paced, exciting action that bettors can get involved with.

Horse racing has long had a very social element to it as well, highlighted by gatherings at racetracks, especially for big events like the King’s Plate Stakes in Toronto¹, which has a $1,000,000 prize purse. High-profile races like that have appeal for not only seasoned bettors, but they pull in casual bettors to the occasion as well.

Online Convenience

The popularity of online horse racing is likely to grow even further according to the article Horse Racing to Become a Staple at More Betting Sites, Written by Eamon Doggett, Published by gambleontario.ca² partly thanks to how convenient it is to do on a betting site. 

Access to form and analytics within a race card, coupled with ways to watch replays of previous races to catch up on form, plus dip into live streams of races, really adds weight to the online betting experience.

The simple convenience of it, as well, is another big driving force in the growing popularity of online horse racing betting. There’s none of the hassle of having to get to a track or an off-track location just to strike a bet. Online racing betting just opens the door to placing a wager from wherever the bettor is, whenever it is most convenient for them to do so. 

Ontario does not have brick-and-mortar betting shops on the street, so having access to racing betting markets on a mobile device on a legal, regulated sportsbook within the province, is a game changer. Just having horse racing sat alongside all the other popular sports like soccer, tennis and golf is a natural fit.

The demand for horse racing betting has always been there. Bettors having the opportunity to do it the most convenient possible way just helps to fulfil that demand. But it wasn’t always that easy. At the iGaming Ontario launch, it was the one sport over which hung a grey cloud, because racing betting didn’t make it to the start line. 

Rollback to April 2022

When iGaming Ontario was launched on Monday, April 4th, 2022 there was a clamour of excitement. This was a pioneering move over online gambling in Canada, as the province decided on a more modern approach to regulating independent operators. It created a safe and legal way for players to access sports betting options from within the province, giving players a choice of platforms from the open and competitive marketplace. 

Ontario is the only province in Canada to licence independent bookmakers. With the rapid growth of the industry since April 2022, the new system has helped to provide a boost in jobs and has seen plenty going into the coffers of the provincial government. So, all seems well.

But when this all got going, horse racing wasn’t included in the mix. It was not integrated into the great launch of the iGaming Ontario system, and that caused all sorts of confusion.

The Grey Area of Racing Betting

Because Ontarians had access to offshore betting platforms long before iGaming Ontario came along, betting on horse racing was already being done. It was estimated at the time of the launch, that around $1 billion worth of bets were being placed annually by Ontarians using online gambling platforms and 70% of that was going to offshore, unregulated platforms.

Bettors could also go to any Canadian racetrack, off-track betting facilities and some select racing betting apps that were provided by Woodbine Entertainment Group, all under licence from the CPMA for their horse racing betting fixes.

To many people’s surprise, the sportsbooks that were included in the launch of the newly regulated Ontario market, didn’t have the “Sport of Kings” available. So while bettors suddenly had access to a huge amount of regulated online sportsbook options within the province, bettors looking for horse racing were left disappointed. 

For those newly regulated sportsbook operators, it meant that they were missing out on a crucial product of their sportsbook, as worldwide horse racing pulls in a tremendous amount of betting interest.

Type Of Horse Racing Betting

Horse racing betting in Canada is handled at the federal level by the Canadian Parimutuel Agency (CPMA). That means that provinces don’t have a say over it, and therefore Ontario couldn’t just sweep it into being when the new regulated market came along.

Parimutuel betting, a type of pool betting commonly used for wagering on horse racing, is all that’s available for Canadians. After iGaming Ontario kicked off, the problem was that the market was set up to allow only single-event wagering at online sportsbooks. 

IGaming Ontario was initially going to allow bookmakers in the province to offer traditional fixed odds racing bets, but there was big pushback from the horse racing industry at the time over that idea³. The racing community were concerned that if people were just going to use fixed-odds betting at independent sportsbooks, it would drastically dilute the amount of money being taken at racetracks and off-track betting places, heaping a lot of new financial pressures on the racing industry. 

So amidst all the confusion, horse racing was removed from the iGaming Ontario launch, but there was better news ahead for racing fans in Ontario. 

Woodbine Entertainment Involvement

Woodbine Entertainment, which is the leading racetrack operator in the country, has been pivotal in getting horse racing betting online to the masses. Based out of Toronto, Woodbine Entertainment is the only operator with a parimutuel betting licence for Ontario. 

So they hold a lot of power and run all the betting at racetracks within the province, as well as their integrated network of betting apps. Naturally, they had a sizeable interest in how online horse racing betting was to be implemented in Ontario in a way that benefitted everyone. 

The solution came in 2023 when Woodbine announced that they teamed up with world-famous bookmaker bet365 to provide access to parimutuel horse racing betting through the operator’s platform in Ontario⁴. This came after a year’s worth of negotiation with government agencies and regulators to get the deal across the line. 

This is something that could be rolled out beyond Ontario as well in the future, because the CPMA is federal, which could give Woodbine Entertainment the chance to work with lottery corporations in other provinces to get horse racing betting integrated. 

Popularity of horse racing betting in Canada

For Woodbine to work their way to online pari-mutuel horse racing betting in other provinces, like getting onto the PlayNowplatform in British Columbia, is going to take a lot more negotiations. The path to that is going to be long, but the establishment of online parimutuel racing betting in Ontario gives working proof that it can be done successfully and that there are benefits to it as well. 

The current working solution is mutually beneficial for all partners, with bettors getting what they want, the racing industry not being ravaged by single-event betting and a huge upswing in betting interest for the operator. 

Horse racing is typically projected to be worth as much as 10% of a sportsbook’s annual revenue. With $588 million wagered on sports in the province in the previous financial year according to iGaming Ontario’s FY 2023-24 Full Year Market Performance Report⁵, horse racing alone would bring a huge revenue and all of this is only going to fuel the popularity of online horse racing betting further.

1. Caitlinhergrtness wins 165th King’s Plate at Woodbine, Written by Canadian Press, Published by sportsnet.ca

2. Horse Racing to Become a Staple at More Betting Sites, Written by Eamon Doggett, Published by gambleontario.ca

3. iGaming Ontario Has Launched; When Will Horse Racing Be Included?, Written by CT Staff, Published by canadianthoroughbred.com 

4. Horse Racing Now Available to Ontario Sports Bettors, Written by Grace Martin Published by woodbine.com

5. iGaming Ontario’s FY 2023-24 Full Year Market Performance Report, Written by iGaming Ontario, Published by igamingontario.ca