Ontario Proposes Stricter Deposit Limits for Online Gambling
30 October 2026
The Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario has proposed enhanced player protection measures for Ontario’s rapidly growing iGaming market. The move, announced September 18, 2025, would require licensed sports betting and iGaming operators to deploy real-time monitoring tools to detect anomalous betting patterns and intervene with mandatory cooling-off periods or referrals to support services.
Background: Limits and Timelines
The AGCO's Internet Gaming standards already mandate players set financial and time-based limits to promote responsible gaming. These limits, such as deposit and loss caps, must be easy to set upon registration and at any time after.
Operators must offer at least daily, weekly, and monthly limited periods. If a player requests to adjust an existing limit, the AGCO requires a minimum 24-hour cooling-off period before the change takes effect to prevent impulsive decisions.
The operator OLG allows players to set custom deposit limits in daily, weekly, and monthly caps that refresh on a rolling 24-hour, 7-day, and 30-day basis. Players under 25 must set a deposit limit after making a single $500 deposit to encourage safer spending habits, OLG said.
What AGCO is Proposing, and Why
Under the new proposal, operators would be required to use real-time analytics to flag odd betting behavior, such as rapid large deposits or prolonged continuous play, and trigger one of two responsive actions:
1. A mandatory 72-hour cooling-off period during which a player is unable to place bets. A similar 72-hour pause is already applied for self-excluded players.
2. An offer to chat with a counselor or support service about problem gambling indicators in their bet history.
In addition, the AGCO proposes making operators set dynamic "soft" deposit caps based on each player's spending data and gaming history, which a player could request to raise with a 6-hour waiting period. AGCO said this is not a total deposit cap, since players would still be able to deposit up to the regulator's maximum with ID verification.
AGCO said the goal is to act on universally identified bad gambling habits as soon as possible to prevent harmful escalation. The commission has not detailed how it defines warning signs such as "rapid", "large", or "prolonged", or who will define them.
The consultation period is open until October 15, 2025, after which the commission will review feedback and potentially finalize the measures.
State of Play in Ontario
The proposal would intensify online gambling protections in Ontario, which has become one of the world's largest regulated markets since launching online sports betting in April 2022.
Ontario sites currently offer a wide range of deposit limits. Minimum deposits land at around $5, while operators like Jason's on Interac Flash allow going high as $25,000. That benchmark is likely set with whales in mind - provincial reports show the average casino customer spends about $80 per day.
While many operators already promote deposit limits as part of responsible gaming, they are far from ubiquitous. There's also no guarantee a player will retain the limit they set - it's not unusual for casinos to remove or ignore loss limits, or measure losses in a way that means they never really get hit.
How Ontario's Operators Might Respond
If implemented, the new controls for online casinos could present a major change to account management workflows, to say nothing of in-game pokes and interventions.
Should a large deposit or betting streak catch the system's attention, operators would face the tricky task of balancing cooler heads and responsible gaming tools with the retention-disrupting nuisance of a forced pause. The 72-hour time frame is long and hard to deliver an in-depth customer service intervention. Tighter deposit caps could transform the onboarding process, especially if they surprise players bypassing the critical information.
Players over 25 could meet less pushback than under-25s on requests to loosen or eliminate limits. Those requests will still face AGCO's 24-hour cooling-off, even under the proposed rules.
Problems raised during consultation could spell the rise of a utility to do cool-downs and limit changes herself, fronting the appeal and owning the interaction, instead of the game's interruption. Questions have also been raised about link-backs to either the AGCO customer service line or the site's own customer service.
AGCO will consider submissions to the consultation from industry and public by October 15, 2025. Reforms, if made, are expected early next year.