Bill C-218: Taking the over on sports betting in Canada

According to SponsorPulse data, the top purchasing category for many of Canada’s biggest professional sports teams is online betting. Through the power of the sponsorship-intelligence platform, we can compare the country’s most popular teams to see which generates the highest level of engagement among people that have placed an online bet in the past 12 months. The following are the top 5 teams:

1) Toronto Blue Jays (81%)

2) Toronto Maple Leafs (80%)

3) Toronto Raptors (79%)

4) Montreal Canadiens (77%)

5) CF Montreal(68%)

To clarify, for example, this means that 81% of Canadians who have placed an online bet in the past year have engaged with the Toronto Blue Jays at least once. Sponsorship professionals can often lean on this data to identify the properties where a brand is most likely to meet and intercept this intended group of people.

In Canada, Bill C-218 is seeking to amend the Criminal Code to make single-game sports betting legal; currently only parlay wagering is allowed through Canadian lotteries. The estimation from the Canadian Gaming Association is that each year Canadians are spending CAD$10 billion on illegal sports betting operations and CAD$4 billion on online offshore wagering websites.

This is massive news for online sports betting companies (like DraftKings) who stand to benefit from strategic partnerships with professional teams and leagues, as the potential to see an increase in their engagement levels among online bettors is high if Bill C-218 is approved by the Senate in the coming months.

For more consumer data on Canadian professional sports teams, visit www.sponsorpulse.com!