What percentage of your income is it OK to gamble? Less than you think

Résumé détaillé

Even small bets can add up over time, eating into savings and making it harder to reach long-term financial goals, experts warn

With online gambling on the rise, mental health experts and financial planners are warning that recreational betting can turn into a financial drain even when it doesn’t become an addiction.

Since Ontario opened its regulated online gambling market to private operators in 2022, the number of active online gambling accounts in the province has soared, reaching 1.4 million in September. That was up about 20 per cent from just a year earlier. Now, Alberta is preparing to follow a similar path.

Recent online gambling data from Ontario, as well as self-reported numbers from surveys, suggest Canadians are easily wagering more than $200 a month on average, a sum vastly above guidelines for low-risk gambling.

Even small, regular bets can add up over time, eating into savings and making it harder to reach long-term financial goals, experts warn. And because individual bets can seem insignificant, gamblers may underestimate how much they’re spending.

In September, iGaming Ontario reported that each active player account generated operators an average of $295 in revenue, up from $280 a year earlier. That figure represents the amount operators kept from players’ bets after paying out winnings that month. It doesn’t necessarily reflect how much the average individual gambler lost, since people can hold accounts with multiple operators. iGaming does not report the average number of accounts players hold.

A March survey conducted by polling firm Leger for British Columbia’s gambling regulator found that people who gambled reported spending an average of $211 a month, rising to $313 among those who gambled online.

For most Canadians, those amounts are significantly above the limits recommended in research from the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction.

In a report called Developing Lower-Risk Gambling Guidelines, researchers at the centre recommend individuals gamble no more than 1 per cent of their household income before tax each month.

“If they’re going to gamble above these…

Début de l'article, extrait de The Globe and Mail (Report on Business). Pour lire la suite, ouvrez l'article chez le média.