>We are writing to request that your government use the legislative and regulatory tools at its disposal—including but not limited to its powers to give direction to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC)—to impose a ban on all advertising for sports gambling apps and websites, similar to the existing ban on cigarette advertising.
>You are no doubt aware that in the aftermath of the passage of Bill C-218, *An Act to amend the Criminal Code (sports betting)* in 2021, Canadians have been subjected to a deluge of advertising for sports betting “services”. In 2024, CBC published a report indicating that up to one-fifth of televised sporting events contain ads for gambling sites. To put it another way, almost two innings of a baseball game are gambling ads: it is reaching the point where the ads are competing with the actual event, rather than supporting it.
>Such persistent publicity is more than a mere annoyance interfering with the simple enjoyment of sporting events. The sheer scale of the money at stake endangers the very integrity of the sports involved. To quote Fay Vincent, a former commissioner of Major League Baseball:
>*I don’t think the next 20 or 30 years is going to be a pretty story about gambling in the sports world because the money is going to be so enormous, and wherever the money is enormous the corruption follows.*
>As if to demonstrate the seriousness of this growing problem, in 2024 the National Basketball Association issued what amounts to a lifetime ban to then Toronto Raptor basketball player Jontay Porter for, in the words of the league, “disclosing confidential information to sports bettors, limiting his own participation in one or more games for betting purposes, and betting on NBA games.”
>But the more immediate problem, the one that, sadly, we don’t have to wait thirty years to experience, is the very real harm being done today to vulnerable people of all ages exposed to a constant stream of advertisements promising a “premium gaming experience” and urging them to turn their phone into a pocket-sized casino. We are all too familiar with stories of individuals getting in over their heads and driven to desperate measures to cover their losses, causing damage not only for themselves but for their family as well. We constantly hear media reports of fraud cases caused by gambling addiction, leading to jail time.
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[Ban Sports Betting Ads](https://nationalnewswatch.com/2025/11/21/ban-sports-betting-ads)
>Dear Prime Minister,
>We are writing to request that your government use the legislative and regulatory tools at its disposal—including but not limited to its powers to give direction to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC)—to impose a ban on all advertising for sports gambling apps and websites, similar to the existing ban on cigarette advertising.
>You are no doubt aware that in the aftermath of the passage of Bill C-218, *An Act to amend the Criminal Code (sports betting)* in 2021, Canadians have been subjected to a deluge of advertising for sports betting “services”. In 2024, CBC published a report indicating that up to one-fifth of televised sporting events contain ads for gambling sites. To put it another way, almost two innings of a baseball game are gambling ads: it is reaching the point where the ads are competing with the actual event, rather than supporting it.
>Such persistent publicity is more than a mere annoyance interfering with the simple enjoyment of sporting events. The sheer scale of the money at stake endangers the very integrity of the sports involved. To quote Fay Vincent, a former commissioner of Major League Baseball:
>*I don’t think the next 20 or 30 years is going to be a pretty story about gambling in the sports world because the money is going to be so enormous, and wherever the money is enormous the corruption follows.*
>As if to demonstrate the seriousness of this growing problem, in 2024 the National Basketball Association issued what amounts to a lifetime ban to then Toronto Raptor basketball player Jontay Porter for, in the words of the league, “disclosing confidential information to sports bettors, limiting his own participation in one or more games for betting purposes, and betting on NBA games.”
>But the more immediate problem, the one that, sadly, we don’t have to wait thirty years to experience, is the very real harm being done today to vulnerable people of all ages exposed to a constant stream of advertisements promising a “premium gaming experience” and urging them to turn their phone into a pocket-sized casino. We are all too familiar with stories of individuals getting in over their heads and driven to desperate measures to cover their losses, causing damage not only for themselves but for their family as well. We constantly hear media reports of fraud cases caused by gambling addiction, leading to jail time.
Based. It’s absolutely awful out there.