Gambling is a pastime that has been around for millennia and yet we’re still learning how people like to indulge in it. Why is it that some people love to have a wager, while others would never even think to? And why is it that there are certain demographics and geographical areas that seem to gravitate towards gambling while others do not?
As with all forms of multi-dimensional analysis, the answer is complex, subtle and highly nuanced in places. An interesting place to start is to consider how participation and economic impact varies across provinces. This will give us a greater appreciation of why things are the way they are, and open the doors for a more granular analysis. Let’s begin by assessing the size of the industry as a whole before diving deeper.
How big is the Canadian gambling sector in 2024?
Canadian gaming generates over 135,000 full-time jobs and a recent study by the University of Calgary found that another 132,000 indirect and auxiliary jobs have also been created. The combined efforts of all these people produce $8.6 billion every year, which is then put towards a wide portfolio of government-led community programs for those less fortunate. While there is naturally much debate about how the money is allocated and proportioned, our focus here is the source of the money itself.
To understand the true state of any industry, we must ask ourselves the following questions:
- How sustainable is the model the industry is built on, and how likely is it to withstand shifts in new technology and behavioural trends?
- Who is the primary audience, and what efforts are being made to convert secondary audiences into primary players and customers?
- How is the income from the industry distributed in terms of geographic and demographic profile?
What we are asking, in effect, is how the industry works, who is driving it and how it is reflected at a national level. By getting to the root of these questions, we can gain a much greater understanding and appreciation of how gambling in Canada is currently operating.
Who is the primary audience on a national level?
Interestingly, a clear link has been established between speculation and gambling among middle-aged men, the largest audience for gambling in Canada. Regardless of where in the country and how rich each individual province is, middle-aged men constitute the largest share of the audience. This appears to be driven by a variety of interconnected factors that drive their propensity to lay bets and place a wager:
- Middle-aged men are more likely to be earning a comfortable salary, have started a family and be set up in terms of having a car and mortgage. As people who typically earn above-average income relative to the median in their local area, they will tend to have more disposable income.
- Men who work long hours and want to add a degree of controlled risk and excitement back into their lives but who are short on free time will naturally gravitate to the odds offered by the gambling industry.
- A middle-aged man used to work to tight deadlines, managing high-profile accounts or taking managed risks when they work outside in jobs in which accidents are more common is more likely to be comfortable with a degree of risk-taking.
- As the person who will still tend to bring in the larger wage in the household, a middle-aged man is more likely to feel comfortable with making up losses from next month’s pay packet.
While these insights give us a better idea of who is placing the bets before we dive deeper into the variation across provinces, a word of caution is needed at this point, far from being a pastime just for men of a certain age, studies actually show that 60% of Canadians gamble at least once a year.
Interestingly, 73% of respondents to the same survey noted that in the last 24 months, they have seen a rise in problem gambling in their local province. Problem gambling can be defined according to the following characteristics:
- Playing regularly to the detriment of other activities, roles and responsibilities in life: profession, career, relationships, parenting and missing out on other social activities.
- Placing bets that you cannot afford to lose and subsequently encountering periods of financial hardship as a result.
- Feelings of withdrawal when you are unable to play, and feeling the need to chase losses while playing.
- Taking continuous, poorly managed risks could have a significant negative impact on your quality of life and that of your loved ones.
- Use of substances to counter gambling stress and to try and make up for the feeling of euphoria gambling provides during times when you are unable to play.
To underline the attitudes of the wider population to problem gambling, 86% of respondents to the aforementioned survey stated that they think the individual holds full responsibility for how they control their habit. Of particular note is the fact that problem gambling does not spike in provinces with a lower GDP and average household income. This leads us naturally to a pivotal question in our analysis.
How do gambling habits vary between provinces?
As any of the respected Toronto news sites will tell you, Ontario consistently makes up 37% of the total GDP in the country, with Toronto alone accounting for half that figure. This is followed closely by Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba – the Prairies – which have booming natural resource and energy industries as a result of their geography and concentrated distribution of raw materials.
A recent study has shown that participation rates vary greatly across Canadian provinces. Quebec has the highest proportion of active gamblers at the time of writing, with 69% engaging in some form of gambling within the last 12 months. The Prairies have the lowest, at a little over 50%, driven in large part by lower playing rates in Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
While much of the Prairies are booming economically due to the influx of energy and natural resource industries, there are areas that contribute significantly less to the GDP. This shows that gambling is no longer directly linked with affluence, as we have a region that contains areas that would fit a high-affluence profile and others that would fit a low-affluence profile.
This tells us that it is no longer enough to look at the median household income per province and use this to rank gambling participation rates and the resulting economic contribution. The answer as to why this is happening is more nuanced and complex and relies on a wider range of societal factors and variables – many of them social and cultural – to get to the bottom of things.
What’s behind the difference in participation and contribution rates?
Demographic shifts between provinces, ageing populations, large influxes of skilled workers and even changes in cultural attitudes in a country with such a vast geographical expanse are all at play here to varying degrees. There is also a hidden variable of sorts that we must factor into our analysis.
Trusted sites like PlayCasinos.ca allow players from all over the country to play a wide selection of games in a private, secure online environment with nothing but a smartphone and a Wi-Fi connection. This complicates the analysis from an economic point of view when approaching things on a province-by-province basis.
Whereas a brick-and-mortar casino would directly create jobs in the local area, this is not necessarily the case for an online casino. Instead, the money flows to a single central entity, which then distributes it to an itinerant workforce. That workforce could be largely concentrated in a single physical office in one corner of the country, or it could consist almost entirely of remote workers who are distributed across the country.
The result is the potential for uniform contribution to participation rates across all provinces but a highly unpredictable economic impact in terms of direct job creation and local employment.
Final thoughts
Gambling used to have something of a reputation as an industry that would be most prominent in areas and provinces with lower economic prospects. With players having less disposable income and essentially more to lose in relative terms, this could lead to issues, but this is no longer the case.
In 2024, you see provinces like Quebec that are no doubt among the most affluent and economically progressive having the highest participation rates. They also have the highest economic results as part of the wider Canadian gambling industry. At the same time, you have the Prairies – areas in which a significant amount of the population is made up of young to middle-aged men working in heavy industry – where there is a sizable number of people with above-median wages who are not participating in gambling.
We take from this that gambling in Canada in 2024 is dictated more by personal choices and hyper-local cultural influences than previous analyses focused on GDP contribution were able to highlight.
Other articles from totimes.ca – otttimes.ca – mtltimes.ca
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