September brings not only the end of summer, but also the return of sports—and, predictably, a wave of misinformed coverage about advertising and gaming. However, even more seriously, this month demonstrates a marked failure by media to understand what regulation brings to online gaming.
Over the past few weeks, Canadians have seen several stories about youth and gambling in different newspapers, each identifying a different part of the problem. Yet none seemed to notice that they were missing half of the story.
The Globe and Mail first reported new data from CAMH’s Ontario Student Drug Use and Health Survey, which found that more Ontario teenagers said they gambled online last year than in previous cycles. The data are real, and the trend deserves attention: online gambling among students in grades 7 to 12 has risen from under 8 per cent two years ago to nearly 12 per cent today. Days later, the National Post reported something that should have been treated as connected news: parents admitting, in their own words, that they opened the betting account their teenager later used.
Then, this past weekend, a Globe and Mail columnist wrote about “a recent report published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine that found a sharp increase in gambling-related emergency room visits after online sports betting and single-event betting were legalized and expanded. Over 14 years, researchers found visits rose 154 per cent among males aged 10 to 29 and 116 per cent among males aged 30 to 44, with no change among females.
The incidence numbers are modest—the report identified 952 emergency-room visits over 14 years—but that figure does not capture the likely thousands more whose lives have been disrupted or damaged by online gambling without reaching an emergency-room crisis.”
Read together, these stories raise a question that no paper or columnist asked on their own: how are underage Canadians accessing gambling, and through which platforms?
More strangely, none of the coverage seems to recognize that young people live much of their lives on digital platforms, creating an obvious path for bad actors to reach them.
Canadians have had access to online gambling for 25 years, and Ontario and Alberta have since introduced stronger market protections. The goal is shared: better protection for players. But the digital environment has changed quickly over the past five years, and yet we still do not fully talk about how young people are finding their way into gambling.
Every operator registered to take bets in Ontario is legally barred from opening an account for anyone under 19; in Alberta, the minimum age is 18. Before a player can deposit, the operator must verify identity under FINTRAC-compliant standards—either by matching the user against a credit bureau file or by checking government ID through facial-recognition and liveness verification. The system is not perfect, but it reliably confirms whether an adult opened the account and provides an example of how the regulated industry takes responsibility by not letting underage people gamble.
Unauthorized operators do not rely on traditional television advertising to reach Canadian consumers. Their acquisition channels include social media, streaming platforms, search engines, affiliate sites, creator accounts, short-form video, incentivized referrals, online communities and other digital spaces.
These channels are hard to contain within national borders. A livestream produced overseas can be clipped and redistributed across TikTok, Meta platforms, X, YouTube and countless other places. An influencer does not need to be in Canada to reach Canadian audiences, and affiliate websites can rank highly in search results while directing users to operators that are unauthorized in the user’s jurisdiction.
The path to an unauthorized site can also come with instructions for evading access controls. Some affiliate sites provide step-by-step guidance on using VPNs to reach gambling brands from restricted jurisdictions, while offshore operators may use alternate domains or mirror sites when a primary domain is blocked. This is not universal—some offshore operators expressly prohibit VPN circumvention in their terms—but the broader acquisition ecosystem can make geographic restrictions much easier to bypass.
Then there is the role of influencers.
That role matters. Major offshore brands have invested heavily in celebrity and cultural visibility, using figures such as Neymar, Ronaldinho, Drake, Snoop Dogg and Jason Derulo to build awareness well beyond traditional gambling audiences. Duel.com offers a recent example, with Mike Tyson, Bonnie Blue and Lil Pump appearing in or being associated with its promotional content, alongside promotional and sponsorship activity linked to Clavicular and Andrew Tate (we assume before they were arrested).
Duel.com is not licensed in Ontario. Yet it remains accessible from a Toronto IP address and allows direct sign-in through existing Google or Steam accounts. The same pattern appears among several other offshore brands that rely on high-profile celebrity and influencer partnerships. Their content can still move through the social, streaming and creator-led environments used by Canadian consumers, giving those brands visibility and credibility in markets where they operate outside the regulated system.
That context matters because the answer determines what will actually protect young people.
So, when a parent tells a reporter they opened the account themselves, that is not evidence that age verification failed. It suggests the opposite: verification worked as designed and identified an adult. What happened afterward is a different problem, unfolding household by household, and it calls for different solutions—parental controls, bank- and card-level spending limits, direct conversations at home, and fuller use of the deposit limits and self-exclusion tools every regulated operator is already required to provide.
That contrasts with the question no one asked: how many teenagers in the CAMH survey who reported online sports gambling were using a regulated Ontario platform, and how many were using an offshore site with no ID check, no deposit limits and no legal presence in Canada? The survey does not ask, and its limitations section says so. If most underage gambling is happening there, the answer is not tighter rules for operators that already cannot legally open a minor’s account. It is enforcement against illegal operators that were never following the rules to begin with.
Judging a regulated, closely supervised industry by a survey question that cannot distinguish a licensed Ontario platform from an offshore sportsbook—or by a story about parents handing over their own verified accounts—or that blames TV advertising and ignores what’s happening on Meta platforms —does not help Canadians protect a fifteen-year-old from a bad bet. It offers a headline-friendly villain instead of identifying the actual point of access. The industry understands the need for greater education and awareness for youth to understand the risks of gambling and how influencers are preying on them. Coupled with strong regulation, these are the strongest tools that licensed operators have at their disposal.
The next reporter, researcher or regulator who wants to take youth gambling seriously—and we hope many do—should ask the question all the stories skipped: whose account was it, and which operator, legal or illegal, allowed the bet? We will answer that question whenever it is put to us. We would like to see it asked of the illegal operators who never will.
Grounding: Boak, A., & Hamilton, H. A. (2026). The Mental Health and Well-Being of Ontario Students, 1991–2025 (OSDUHS), CAMH, Section 3.5.1 and Discussion; The Globe and Mail, Aug. 24, 2026, coverage of the OSDUHS gambling findings and CAMH’s advertising-restriction framework; National Post, Aug. 24, 2026, “The under-the-radar epidemic of underage gambling” (characterization pending direct review - see note above); CGA Code for Responsible Gaming Advertising; iGaming Ontario / AGCO KYC and identity-verification standards; Robyn Urback, The Globe and Mail, Sep. 18, 2026, “Canada opened the door to private sports betting years ago, and then walked away”; SumSub Evidence for The House of Commons Standing Committee on Heritage re: Bill S-211.