Bill 107 adds a new, standalone prohibition to the Gaming Control Act, 1992 that bars a person who operates an "electronic gaming site" — and anyone acting on their behalf — from advertising or otherwise promoting the site or anything offered on it. The text supplies narrow exceptions (imported publications/retransmissions when not promotional, unpaid artistic works, and unpaid reporting/commentary), makes breaches offences under the Act, sets maximum fines and directs automatic revocation of a supplier registration on a second or subsequent conviction.
This matters because the bill shifts Ontario’s response to online-gambling harms from advisory measures to blunt regulatory penalties and registration consequences. Operators, marketing intermediaries and media partners will face new compliance questions and enforcement risk; public-health actors will gain a statutory tool intended to reduce visibility and normalization of online gambling.
At a Glance
What It Does
The bill inserts a new section that defines an "electronic gaming site" (by reference to the iGaming Ontario Act) and bars operators and persons acting for them from advertising the site or anything offered on it, subject to three narrow exceptions. It amends section 46 to make contraventions provincial offences with maximum fines ($100,000 for individuals, $1,000,000 for corporations) and requires the Registrar to revoke a registration after a second or subsequent conviction.
Who It Affects
Directly targeted: operators of electronic gaming sites and their agents, including affiliates, marketers, and anyone who promotes sites for them. Indirectly affected: broadcasters, publishers, sports organizations and influencers who carry or rely on gambling-related sponsorship and advertising revenue, and the Registrar responsible for enforcement and registration decisions.
Why It Matters
The bill converts advertising restrictions into enforceable penalties and registration sanctions rather than voluntary guidelines, increasing legal risk for established marketing channels and likely shrinking visible advertising. That creates compliance and commercial shocks for the iGaming ecosystem while giving regulators a sharper lever to limit public exposure to online gambling.
More articles like this one.
A weekly email with all the latest developments on this topic.
What This Bill Actually Does
The core change in the bill is simple on paper: it forbids promotion by the operator of an online gambling site and by anyone acting on that operator’s behalf. The ban covers advertising as well as other forms of promotion and extends to "anything that is offered or made available on the site," which is drafted broadly and could include bonus offers, games, odds displays or other product features.
The bill does not create a new licensing regime; instead, it tethers the prohibition to the existing Gaming Control Act enforcement machinery.
Exceptions are tightly drawn. The ban does not touch imported publications or retransmitted radio/TV broadcasts that start outside Ontario so long as their local distribution is not intended to promote an Ontario gambling site.
It also exempts creative works (films, plays, songs, etc.) and news or opinion pieces, but only if no consideration was paid by a manufacturer or retailer — in short, unpaid depictions and unpaid commentary are protected, paid placements are not. That "no consideration" test will be central to enforcement questions.Enforcement under the bill stays within the Act: a contravention is an offence with prescribed maximum fines and a new automatic consequence for repeat offenders.
The Registrar must revoke a person’s supplier registration on a second or subsequent conviction and the bill expressly removes the application of section 13 for such a revocation, narrowing the procedural recourse available to the registrant. The Act comes into force on Royal Assent.For regulated operators and their commercial partners, this produces immediate operational tasks: review and likely terminate paid ad campaigns and sponsorships; renegotiate or pause affiliate contracts; audit influencer relationships and creative partnerships for any paid promotion; and assess legal exposure under the Act.
For the regulator, the bill creates a binary enforcement path—fines first, then registration revocation on repeat offences—which prioritizes deterrence but raises practical questions about detection, proof and proportionality.
The Five Things You Need to Know
The ban applies to "a person who operates an electronic gaming site" and "any person acting on such a person's behalf," making affiliates, marketers and agents potential targets of enforcement.
Three exceptions exist: (a) distribution/retransmission of publications or broadcasts originating outside Ontario where distribution is not for promotion, (b) artistic or cultural works that depict gambling if no payment or consideration was given for the depiction, and (c) unpaid news, commentary or opinion.
The bill makes breaches provincial offences with maximum fines of up to $100,000 for individuals and $1,000,000 for corporations.
On a second or subsequent conviction for the advertising offence, the Registrar must order revocation of the person's supplier registration and section 13 of the Act is explicitly inapplicable to that revocation.
The Act takes effect on the day it receives Royal Assent — there is no delayed or phased commencement period.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
Every bill we cover gets an analysis of its key sections.
Prohibition on advertising and broad scope
This is the bill’s substantive core. It imports the "electronic gaming site" definition from the iGaming Ontario Act and then forbids an operator (and anyone acting for them) from advertising or otherwise promoting the site or anything available on it. Practically, the drafting is broad: "anything offered or made available on the site" can sweep in promotional references to products, sign-up bonuses, games, odds and features. Because the prohibition reaches "persons acting on such a person's behalf," common industry arrangements — affiliates, marketing agencies, influencer deals and third‑party ad buys — fall squarely into the statute’s crosshairs unless they fit an exception.
Narrow carve-outs for imported media, unpaid art and unpaid commentary
The bill creates three targeted exceptions. The first protects the sale/distribution or retransmission of content originating outside Ontario so long as the local distribution is not intended to promote an Ontario gambling site, which preserves some cross‑border media flows but invites fact‑specific inquiries about promotional intent. The second and third protect expressive works and journalistic commentary, but only when no consideration is paid by a manufacturer or retailer; this makes the presence or absence of payment the decisive line between lawful depiction and prohibited promotion.
Penalties and mandatory revocation on repeat convictions
The bill amends the Act’s enforcement section to add the new advertising offence to the statute’s penalty framework. It prescribes fines up to $100,000 for individuals and $1,000,000 for corporations upon conviction. Critically, it orders the Registrar to revoke a supplier's registration after a second or subsequent conviction and removes the applicability of section 13 to such revocation, limiting the registrant’s statutory challenge options. That combination pairs financial deterrence with an operationally decisive sanction (loss of registration).
Reference updates tying the new offence into enforcement architecture
The bill makes technical substitutions in subsection references so the new advertising prohibition is properly integrated into the Act’s existing offence and sanction framework. These tidy-up amendments ensure the prohibition triggers the same machinery as other regulatory offences under section 46 (e.g., conviction processes and penalty provisions) rather than requiring a stand‑alone enforcement path.
Commencement and short title
The Act enters into force on Royal Assent and is formally named the Stop Harmful Gambling Advertising Act, 2026. There is no staged implementation timeline or regulatory transition period built into the bill; affected parties would need to comply as soon as the law is effective.
This bill is one of many.
Codify tracks hundreds of bills on this topic across all five countries.
Explore this topic in Codify Search →Who Benefits and Who Bears the Cost
Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- People at risk of gambling harm, especially young adults and adolescents: Reduced commercial exposure aims to lower normalization and impulsive sign-ups driven by pervasive advertising.
- Public‑health and mental‑health providers: The statute gives health agencies a statutory backstop to reduce population exposure and the promotional drivers of problem gambling.
- Sports and cultural organizations seeking to distance themselves from gambling branding: The ban limits visible sponsorship channels for online operators and supports efforts to de‑link gambling promotion from sports culture.
- General public concerned about normalization of gambling: A visible decline in paid advertising could reduce incidental exposure in mainstream media and social feeds.
Who Bears the Cost
- Operators of electronic gaming sites: They must halt paid promotional activity, rework customer‑acquisition strategies, face fines for non‑compliance and risk losing supplier registration after repeat convictions.
- Advertising and affiliate networks, marketers and influencers: Those who place or accept paid promotions for operators become enforcement targets and lose a revenue stream; contracts and commission structures will need legal review.
- Broadcasters, publishers and sports teams: Entities that rely on gambling sponsorship and ad revenue will face immediate revenue impacts and contractual disruption.
- Registrar and regulatory apparatus: Enforcement, investigation and revocation processes demand administrative resources and likely more fact‑intensive inquiries into payments and promotional intent.
- Small suppliers and service providers working with operators: The risk of secondary liability (for those "acting on behalf") raises compliance costs and may chill legitimate business relationships.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The bill trades broad, preventive public‑health regulation (reducing exposure and normalization) for a blunt enforcement regime that raises hard questions about legal clarity, proportionality and practicability: a wide ban simplifies the policy goal but complicates enforcement, business planning and the protection of legitimate expressive or journalistic activity.
The bill’s apparent clarity masks several implementation and interpretive challenges. First, the statute hinges on contested factual determinations: what precisely counts as "advertise or otherwise promote" and when is a third party "acting on such a person's behalf"?
Modern promotion includes affiliate tracking links, native content, influencer posts, in‑app notifications and programmatic ad buys; distinguishing prohibited promotion from independent speech or neutral platform hosting will require operational guidance or case law. Second, the three exceptions rest on a "no consideration" test that will be difficult to police.
Indirect payments, revenue‑share deals, in‑kind exchanges, or legacy sponsorships can be structured to obscure compensation; regulators will need forensic tools to trace value flows to enforce the prohibition effectively.
Third, the revocation rule is both potent and procedurally compressed. Mandating revocation on a second conviction and removing section 13’s application narrows administrative remedies and escalates risk for suppliers before proportionality questions are resolved.
Finally, the law’s province‑bound reach collides with cross‑border digital distribution: operators and platforms can shift promotional activity outside Ontario or rely on retransmission/import exceptions to blunt enforcement, which may limit the ban’s practical effect unless paired with robust monitoring and co‑operation from intermediaries.
There's more to this law than the bill.
Codify Laws traces every connection across the legislative lifecycle.