New self-exclusion website in Canada

About a month ago, when gamblers in Ontario, Canada logged into their favorite betting site they were forced to accept a new upgrade on every app they had installed on their smartphones or computers. Last week the reason became clear.

BetGuard launches in Canada

As of May 15th, all betting websites in Ontario now have a link to a website called betguard.ca that allows bettors a place to exclude themselves from all gambling in the province. Prior to this, the province had something called My Playbreak, for Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation (OLG) only, that allowed bettors to exclude themselves from the OLG website and all OLG run casinos in the province, but BetGuard is run by iGaming Ontario and includes every gambling website operated in the province. Previously, players had to self-exclude separately with each operator, and BetGuard operates independently from those individual self-exclusion programs. So if, for example, a resident wants to exclude themselves from DraftKings only, they can still do so with the self exclusion tool on the DraftKings website and can still play at FanDuel or Bet365, if they didn’t exclude themselves there as well.

According to the website, "BetGuard is a centralized self-exclusion tool where you set the length of time you want to opt out of regulated igaming in Ontario. BetGuard verifies your identity and adds you to its central registry for the time you specify. Regulated online gambling websites in Ontario can then match your information and prevent you from logging into or creating accounts. This establishes a secure, single barrier that you put in place."

Anyone worried about accidentally locking themselves out of all Ontario gambling sites by clicking the link can relax. The self-exclusion process is detailed and requires several steps, including selecting an exclusion period ranging from six months to five years. Users must also verify their identity by submitting ID and taking a selfie, similar to the registration process at most online gambling sites. The facial recognition is a safeguard and it is supposed to apply to online gambling only. But, by all accounts it will also apply to land-based casinos in Ontario as well, since OLG is part of BetGuard. So, when entering a casino your face will be identified at the entry and you will be denied access there too.

Centralized self-exclusion in other countries

While this is considered quite a breakthrough because it is a centralized exclusion tool for the whole province, it is not unique. Other countries have a similar program, including Germany, which was the first country to include such a tool in 2021 as part of their Interstate Treaty on Gambling. Thus, if you self excluded, you couldn’t wager in Bavaria, Hamburg or any of the 16 states, including Schleswig-Holstein, which as many will recall originally went rouge resulting in the national treaty. And nine other European countries including the UK have followed suit. Brazil also just added a centralized exclusion tool as part of their gambling rollout and in the United States almost all states with online gambling (whether it includes only sports or casino also) have a statewide self exclusion option too, although one notable exception is Nevada. In that state individuals can only self exclude by asking the individual casino operators to include them on a voluntary exclusion list.

Not a perfect solution

While this is clearly a positive development to combat problem gambling it does have flaws. According to a 2023 BMC Public Health Study that surveyed self-exclusion in Germany there were ways to evade the ban and the effect of the program is minimal. More concerning is that the number who signed up was so small that the amount of problem gamblers blocked was almost immaterial.

Gamblers gonna gamble

According to a survey that was part of the study, almost a quarter of those who self-excluded indicated they were able to breach the ban by signing up with an alternate email and phone number or by using the account of a family member or friend and gamble on the site they self-excluded. This is because IP addresses are generally not used as part of the identification tool and even if they were, there are spoofing tools and VPNs that can disguise the true IP address, making it virtually impossible for gambling sites to identify and block players trying to evade the ban. The study also said that individuals often enter land-based facilities and gambled even though they should have been blocked either because of faulty facial recognition tools or indifference by security guards monitoring the entrance to the casino. 

It should be noted that in North America the issue with facial recognition has been a problem as well at land-based casinos even before online gambling was liensed and regulated. A Google search shows pages and pages of people who won a jackpot at a casino and were denied their winnings because they were on a self-exclusion list. One particular gambler at PARX casino in Philadelphia not only was denied a $57,000 jackpot he won last year, but was also charged with trespassing for daring to enter the casino while self-excluded. It has resulted in many discussions as to whether the blame should be with the bettor for trying to evade the ban or the casino which failed to do its job by stopping the bettor from entering in the first place.

Easier to evade bans in the U.S.

Of course, the ban is only relevant to the state or province where the ban is implemented,  meaning that there is really nothing stopping someone who self-excludes in Pennsylvania from driving the few minutes to New Jersey and gambling there, provided they are not using the same website. So if the person self-excludes at BetMGM in Pennsylvania they will not be able to bet at BetMGM in New Jersey but would be able to bet at DraftKings provided they did not self-exclude at that site in Pennsylvania. There are discussions currently taking place in the U.S. to have a nationwide self-exclusion program that would ban someone from gambling everywhere in the country if they self-exclude in one location, but the logistics of implementing that would be quite cumbersome.

Online and in-person gambling

One issue with the ban is that casinos connected to websites are applying it everywhere they operate. I spoke with an individual I met at a gambling conference who told me at an RG session at the conference that he went with friends to Las Vegas for a vacation. They stayed at MGM Grand and what he didn’t know was that his friend excluded himself and his wife at both BetMGM and BetCaesars in his home state one year prior. So when they went to the casino to play, they were flagged when they inserted a player’s card and authorities told them to leave the casino immediately or they would be charged with trespassing. Consequently, they could not play at any casino operated by MGM or Caesars. And when they went to Wynn they were also informed they were on an exclusion list there as well, since apparently the manager at MGM Grand informed all casinos in the city to not allow them to play. The individual said that what they were hoping would be a fun vacation filled with both tourism and gambling turned into a boring vacation where they basically went to a few shows, sat by the pool, watched TV in the room and counted down the days until the plane was set to return home - especially since the temperature in the city approached 110 degrees.

The internet is the World Wide Web

One other problem with the ban is that it only applies to regulated websites. Offshore gambling sites are still very prevalent and while you can usually self-exclude there too, they have no interaction with states, so there is no way for a site like Heritage Sports or crypto only sites like BetAnything to know that someone self excluded in a U.S. state or in Ontario. And it is not certain whether prediction sites like Kalshi and Polymarket or Sweepstake Casino sites like Stake.US would even care if someone is self excluded in a particular state, even though they are technically legal and regulated in most states. Each of those sites has a self-exclusion option, but again it requires the individual to ask the site to exclude them and fill in a form that says they want to be blocked if they try to sign in. Moreover, BetGuard and products like it are considered binding contracts so if someone self-excludes in Ontario for one year, they are bound to the contract and the time or exclusion is not negotiable. Other self exclusion tools at sites like Kalshi are totally voluntary so being allowed to gamble again at those sites would only likely require a brief conversation with the website’s manager.

I spoke with Ed who lives in a suburb of Toronto and he told me that he is still self-excluded from almost every Ontario casino when he added himself to the self-exclusion list in what he called “a moment of frustration.” He said he lost a lot of money playing online slots at a popular website so he filled out the form at the casinos and excluded himself for a 2-year period. He almost immediately regretted it and said that in the almost one year since, he has a new job paying more money, has cleared all his debt and is in a much better position financially than he was at the time. But despite pleas to the websites and regulator to allow him to cancel his self-exclusion, he was told he can’t play until the two years are up. As a result, he now plays at offshore websites based in Costa Rica and Malta. He said the only ones losing out on him not be able to gamble are the Ontario government and the gambling websites, since there are still options for him. That said, he did tell me that the forced break did allow him to refocus and take time to identify why he was betting so much and set up a plan to gamble responsibly, which of course is one of the purposes of self exclusion tools like BetGuard.

One tool to address Problem Gambling in Canada

So, the province of Ontario has taken a huge step forward by launching a province-wide self-exclusion tool, but if the experience of other countries is any indication, that alone will not eliminate the issues or problem gambling. fix the problem of problem gambling. Nevertheless, as any gambling site will tell you, they do not want problem gamblers as clients despite misconceptions that they are primary targets, since problem gamblers often launch lawsuits and also provide bad publicity in both traditional and social media. As one operator told me “There is a lot of money available out there catering to those who want to play responsibly so we don’t need to target bad apples. So, we welcome any responsible gambling tools that will help weed them out. It’s best for us and the industry.”

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