MPs to vote next week on bill to curb sports betting ads

A House of Commons committee is to vote next week on a bill that would start a national framework for limiting sports betting advertising, as a new analysis shows Canadians face thousands of gambling messages during hockey broadcasts, CBC News reported.

The Commons Canadian heritage committee will consider Bill S-211, which has already passed the Senate. If the committee approves it, the bill would go back to the House of Commons for third and final reading.

Bardish Chagger, the MP for Waterloo, is sponsoring the bill in the House. Sen. Marty Deacon first led it in the Senate. The bill is not prescriptive: it asks the federal government to acknowledge the harms of online gambling and to hold consultations to craft stricter rules. Chagger told CBC she hopes it will eventually lead to a ban on gambling promotions on sportswear and during live sporting events, limits on the hours ads can run, and a prohibition on celebrities and athletes working with gambling companies.

CBC worked with the University of Bristol to count logos and gambling messages during the 2026 NHL playoffs. Across seven televised games featuring Canadian teams, viewers saw 3,000 gambling messages, and 95 per cent of them carried no information about harm reduction or age restrictions. Raffaello Rossi, the lead researcher and a senior lecturer in marketing at Bristol, said the team found ads or logos two to three times every minute, on rink boards, jerseys and helmets and during commercial breaks.

CBC said the results are little changed from a 2024 Marketplace study with the same researchers that counted thousands of ads and product placements in five NHL games. Rossi said Canada is behind other countries in curbing gambling marketing in sport, pointing to near-total bans on sponsorship in Belgium, Italy and Spain.

Current Canadian rules are meant to restrict gambling ads that target minors, people at risk and gamblers who have asked to be excluded from betting sites. CBC reported that the code does not go as far as those in several European countries, where Belgium, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, France and Germany limit gambling ads to after 9 p.m.

Chagger said the bill responds to growing rates of gambling addiction and suicide deaths, including in Ontario since the province allowed private online casinos and sports betting in 2022. Ontario and Alberta oppose the federal bill, according to CBC.

Canadians weighing the risks of betting can read our earlier guide on setting up guardrails before placing sports bets.

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