Play and Bet Convergence Expands in Canada as Esports Meets Wagering Markets

Esports betting didn’t sneak in through the back door. It walked straight through the front once Canada made online wagering legal. If you watch competitive games today betting is already there, sharing the screen and sharing the moment.

Watch any big esports match and you’ll see two things happening at the same time. The game is on, and betting odds are sitting right next to it. That’s the overlap between gaming and gambling, and it has gone big. In Canada, online betting is legal and regulated, and competitive esports is watched live the way football is. Put those together and a growing betting market comes as no surprise. Esports didn’t change. The betting rules did.

Canada’s Regulated Betting Market Sets the Ground Rules

Esports betting has grown so much because the wider betting market which underpins it already exists. In 2024, Canada’s sports betting market generated USD 4,100.5 million in revenue. That figure comes from licensed activity, not estimates or buzz. Projections put the market at USD 8,757.2 million by 2030, based on a 13.6% annual growth rate between 2025 and 2030.

Where this really connects to esports is platform use. In 2024, 80.04% of betting revenue came from online channels. That means betting already happens where esports lives: on PCs and phones, during live events with stats updating in real time. There’s no gap to bridge. Esports fits into a system that’s already built for screen-based competition.

Esports Events Now Sit Next to Betting

If you want a clean example, look at the Six Invitational running in Paris in February 2026.. That’s a proper sports-style setup: fixed dates and a known format with some real money on the line. How much is real money? $3 million.

These games are not child’s play anymore!

When a competition is laid out like that, betting doesn’t feel bolted on. It’s a dyed-in-the-wool part of the ecosystem. You’re watching a match with a scoreboard and a schedule, and the outcome is the point; it’s not playing for funsies. Pro esports leagues are playing for keeps. That level of stakes is exactly what pulls betting interest in, because the matches carry actual weight, even if the sport is digital.

And if betting follows public attention, then the games getting the numbers matter. On PC, the biggest titles pull serious hours. Counter-Strike 2 logged more than 638 million hours played, with a peak player count above 1.5 million in recent rankings. Dota 2 crossed 316 million hours played, with peak players clearing 700,000.

That kind of time spent tells you something simple. These games aren’t background noise. They’re watched, replayed, argued over, and, yes, even have teams with fan bases the way the Chicago Bulls or the New York Yankees have fan bases.

When those fans are already tracking form and past results just to keep up, betting doesn’t feel like a leap. It feels like an extra tab. The audience is already there and paying attention to the game long before any wager is placed.

Ontario Shows What Convergence Looks Like in Practice

Ontario is where the numbers stop being abstract. The province runs a regulated online betting market with published numbers, and those numbers show how play and betting now sit in the same space.

In the 2024–25 financial year, Ontario recorded CAD 82.7 billion in total wagers across its regulated iGaming market. From that activity, operators generated CAD 2.9 billion in gaming revenue.

What’s important here is how betting is grouped. Ontario does not treat esports as a novelty. Esports wagers sit inside the same betting category as traditional sports. That means they run through the same platforms, the same compliance rules, and the same reporting systems. From a user’s point of view, nothing special happens when an esports match replaces a hockey game on the screen. The betting flow stays the same.

Ontario also reported year-on-year growth above 30% in total wagers during this period. That growth didn’t come from one niche. It came from people already betting online, staying there, and expanding what they bet on. Esports didn’t need to fight its way in. It arrived through an open door.

Casino Reviews Sit in the Middle of the Action

Once betting and esports share the same space, people need ways to get their bearings. That’s where reviews come in. Most players aren’t hunting for hype. They want to know how a platform behaves once real money is involved.

Things like payout speed, game availability and account rules decide where bets actually land. That’s why using some of the Jackpot City reviews can actually shed light on the betting environment. They don’t sell the moment, but rather explain the environment players step into when esports betting stops being theoretical and starts being part of a multi-billion dollar industry.

Esports and betting in Canada didn’t collide by accident. Regulatory certainty lined up with platform maturity and player behaviour. What you’re seeing now is a system settling into place, not a trend waiting to happen.