Casino.org traces North American online casino market since the 1990s
A Casino.org retrospective, reported by SBC Americas, maps the shift from offshore websites to regulated state and provincial markets across the US and Canada.
Casino.org has published a retrospective tracing how online casino gambling in North America moved from an unregulated offshore curiosity to a licensed, multi-billion-dollar segment of the continent's gambling industry, according to SBC Americas.
The piece, written by Casino.org content editor Elsa Fiott, places the market's origins in the mid-1990s, when dial-up internet users first reached offshore gambling sites licensed in jurisdictions such as Antigua, Malta and Gibraltar. Those early platforms offered rudimentary versions of slots, blackjack and roulette, with consumer protection standards that varied considerably from operator to operator.
SBC Americas reports that Fiott identifies the 2000s as the decade when rising internet speeds and growing public familiarity with online services pushed lawmakers on both sides of the border to confront the issue of internet gambling directly, setting the US and Canada on noticeably different paths.
Canada's response was to let individual provinces run their own gambling operations, producing government-operated online platforms that gave players a regulated, domestic alternative to offshore sites. The US instead tightened the screws: the 2006 Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act went after the payment processing that underpinned offshore wagering, prompting a number of international gambling firms to pull out of the American market altogether.
According to the retrospective, the next decisive shift in the US came in the 2010s, as oversight moved away from a single federal standard towards a patchwork of state-level regimes. New Jersey was among the first states to build its own licensed iGaming and online poker market under this new structure.
A further inflection point followed in 2018, when the US Supreme Court struck down the federal law barring states from legalising sports betting, the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act. Fiott's account, as relayed by SBC Americas, describes the ruling as the catalyst for a wave of legalisation that saw casino and sportsbook brands fold their products into single, integrated gambling platforms, with mobile betting, digital payments, live-dealer tables and real-time wagering all carried over to sharpen the online casino experience.
Canada's equivalent breakthrough arrived in 2021 with the passage of Bill C-218, which opened the door to single-event sports wagering at the provincial level. Ontario capitalised the following year, launching an open online gambling market in which private operators could apply for licences and compete directly, a model Fiott credits with drawing major international brands and lifting consumer safeguards across the province.
The retrospective notes that Alberta has since followed Ontario's example, opening its own competitive online casino market earlier this year, while flagging that Canada's older provincial model is likely to face further reform given the pace of change elsewhere in the country.
SBC Americas reports that Fiott frames the present-day North American market as one still being reshaped by technological innovation, with operators continuing to compete on convenience and product sophistication three decades after the first offshore casino sites went live.