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Regulation & Law

How Ontario's AGCO Regulates iGaming Marketing and Advertising

An editorial explainer on the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario's marketing and advertising standards for registered iGaming operators, covering inducement restrictions, celebrity endorsement rules, and prohibitions on advertising to minors.

By Editorial Team 7 min read

The Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario has established a detailed set of marketing and advertising standards that govern how registered iGaming operators may promote their services to Ontario residents. These standards, embedded within the AGCO’s Registrar’s Standards for Internet Gaming, address a wide range of promotional practices — from the technical definition of an “inducement” to restrictions on the use of athletes and celebrities in advertising. Understanding these rules is relevant not only to operators and compliance professionals but to anyone following how Ontario has chosen to balance market promotion with consumer protection.

What the Framework Covers

The AGCO’s authority over iGaming marketing derives from its role as the registrar for online gambling in Ontario. Every operator that registers with the AGCO to participate in the iGaming Ontario market agrees, as a condition of registration, to comply with the Registrar’s Standards. Those standards are a living document: the AGCO has issued updates and clarifications since the market opened in April 2022, and the advertising provisions have been among the most actively refined.

The standards address four broad areas of marketing conduct: the use of inducements; advertising placement and content; endorsements by public figures; and the prohibition on advertising that reaches or targets minors. Each area carries specific requirements, and the AGCO has supplementary guidance documents that elaborate on how the standards apply in practice.

What Happened: The Inducements Restriction

The inducement rules are among the most discussed elements of Ontario’s iGaming advertising framework, and they have been the subject of both regulatory clarification and some public debate.

What constitutes an inducement. Under the Registrar’s Standards, an inducement is broadly defined as any offer, benefit, reward, or incentive provided to a player that is designed to encourage them to register, deposit funds, play, or continue playing. The definition is intentionally wide. It captures traditional welcome bonuses (matched deposit offers, free spins, free bets), reload bonuses, loyalty points programs tied to wagering activity, referral bonuses paid to existing players, and time-limited promotional offers that create urgency around gambling activity.

What is prohibited. The core prohibition is on the use of inducements to actively recruit new players or to re-engage players who have reduced or paused their activity. Operators may not advertise inducements in general-purpose media channels — meaning a television advertisement, a social media post visible to the general public, a billboard, or a paid digital display ad cannot feature a bonus offer as a call to action. The rationale is that mass-market inducement advertising drives acquisition behaviour in ways that may not be in the interest of all recipients, including people who are vulnerable to gambling-related harm.

The prohibition extends to unsolicited direct communications. An operator cannot send an email, push notification, or SMS to a player offering a bonus unless that player has actively opted in to receiving promotional communications of that nature. Even within opted-in communications, there are constraints: inducements cannot be targeted at players who have set responsible gambling limits, self-excluded, or whose account activity suggests they may be experiencing harm.

What is permitted. The standards do not prohibit inducements entirely — they restrict the manner in which they are communicated and to whom. Operators may describe available bonuses and promotions on their own websites and apps, within the player account environment, provided the player is already registered and logged in. The distinction the AGCO draws is between advertising inducements outwardly to attract or pressure people into gambling, versus making terms of service and available offers transparent to existing registered users who are actively engaging with the platform.

Operators may also advertise their products, brand, and general features without featuring bonus offers as the primary message. A brand-awareness advertisement that communicates an operator’s name, its sporting sponsorship, or its product range without prominently featuring a bonus offer or promotional incentive does not engage the inducement prohibition in the same way.

Celebrity and Athlete Endorsements

Ontario’s standards include specific provisions on the use of celebrities and athletes in iGaming advertising — provisions that attracted significant attention when introduced and that the AGCO has continued to enforce.

The prohibition on active athletes. The Registrar’s Standards prohibit registered iGaming operators from featuring current, active professional athletes in advertising for their platforms. The concern is straightforward: active athletes have significant influence over sports fans, including young fans, and their association with gambling products could normalise wagering for audiences that include people under the legal age and people who follow sports without necessarily being interested in or informed about gambling. The prohibition applies regardless of whether the advertisement itself is targeted specifically at sports content.

Broader celebrity restrictions. Beyond active athletes, the standards require that all celebrity or public-figure endorsements be reviewed against a standard that asks whether the individual has significant appeal to minors, or whether their endorsement is likely to make gambling attractive to people who ought not to be targeted. Retired athletes, entertainers, and other public figures are not categorically prohibited from appearing in iGaming advertising, but operators bear the burden of ensuring their use is compliant. The AGCO can take enforcement action against operators whose advertising uses public figures in ways that cross the line into inappropriate targeting.

Contextual placement. The endorsement rules interact with placement restrictions. iGaming advertising is not permitted in contexts where the primary audience is expected to be minors — sports programming directed at youth, streaming platforms whose dominant user base is under 19, and similar contexts are off limits regardless of who appears in the advertisement.

Advertising to Minors: Absolute Prohibitions

The protection of minors from iGaming advertising is treated as a near-absolute obligation in Ontario’s framework, and it is one area where the standards admit little ambiguity.

Registered operators are prohibited from directing any advertising or marketing material at persons under the age of 19, which is the legal gambling age in Ontario. This prohibition applies to the content of the advertising, the placement channel, the timing, and the targeting parameters used in digital advertising buys.

In practice, the minors prohibition shapes several operational decisions. Digital advertising campaigns must use audience targeting parameters that exclude users below the legal age, and operators are expected to document the measures they take to minimise exposure. The use of imagery, language, or cultural references that appeal primarily to youth is prohibited even when the intended audience is adults. Advertising in and around youth-oriented sporting events, television programming classified as directed at children, and social media accounts whose primary followership skews under 19 is not permitted.

The AGCO’s approach to enforcement in this area has involved both proactive monitoring and response to complaints. The Commission has the authority to require operators to pull advertising campaigns, to impose conditions on registration, and in cases of serious or repeated non-compliance, to take steps that could affect an operator’s registration status.

Why It Matters

Ontario’s advertising standards represent one of the more detailed and prescriptive approaches to iGaming marketing regulation among common-law jurisdictions. The inducement framework in particular has been watched closely by regulators in other provinces considering their own iGaming frameworks, as well as by researchers who study the relationship between advertising exposure and gambling harm.

The rules acknowledge a tension that is difficult to resolve cleanly: a regulated market requires that players be aware of legal options, which requires some degree of marketing; but marketing gambling products carries risks, particularly for vulnerable populations. Ontario’s framework attempts to resolve that tension by permitting brand advertising while restricting the tools — inducements, celebrity influence, youth-targeted placement — most associated with driving problematic acquisition behaviour.

What’s Next

The AGCO has signalled that it will continue to review and update its advertising standards as the market evolves. Areas under discussion include requirements for more prominent responsible gambling messaging in advertising, further restrictions on inducement communications even within player accounts, and potential refinements to the athlete endorsement rules based on observed compliance patterns.

Industry stakeholders, consumer advocates, and researchers will all have a role in shaping how these standards develop. The AGCO publishes consultation documents when significant changes to the Registrar’s Standards are under consideration, providing a formal channel for public and stakeholder input.

For anyone operating in or reporting on Ontario’s iGaming market, familiarity with the advertising standards — and their continued evolution — is essential context for understanding one of the more consequential regulatory instruments shaping the industry.

Sources

AGCOadvertisingmarketinginducementsresponsible-gamblingontarioregulationminorscelebrity-endorsements
Editorial note: Sitelerikapat News is an independent editorial publication. This article is for informational purposes only. We are not a gambling operator and do not provide gambling services, financial advice, or legal counsel. All information is derived from public sources cited herein.