Sports betting has changed the face of Canadian sports, lit up gambling addiction hotlines and siphoned billions of dollars from fans to industry and governments. It’s just getting started.
I’m not a big sports person. And yet even I can’t escape the barrage of advertisements for sports betting. When I check my favourite websites and social media apps, I get blasted with invitations to gamble with companies like FanDuel and DraftKings. Walking around downtown Toronto, giant billboards from Sportsnet beseech me to place bets. This is a relatively new phenomenon. In 2021, the feds passed legislation that paved the way for single-game sports betting, which largely takes place via smartphone. In 2022, Ontario dove in with iGaming Ontario, which now has nearly two million player accounts—almost one for every eight Ontarians. In two years, the industry has become a multi-billion-dollar behemoth, conquering leagues, franchises and sports media. Anthony Milton, in his first feature-length article for Maclean’s,investigates how legal sports betting has changed sports fandom irrevocably. He writes: “The dozens of competitors now crowding Ontario’s sports-betting marketplaces are leveraging AI and big data to keep players entertained, engaged and ready to place the next bet. As their offerings proliferate, and as other provinces look to emulate Ontario’s online sports-betting model, people are being pulled into the vortex and getting stuck.” —Sarah Fulford, editor-in-chief |
For the past 34 years, Maclean’s has been collecting and analyzing wide-ranging data on Canada’s universities to see how they measure up against one another. Today, the 2025 results are in. |
Up north, a savvy real-estate strategy is making the Canadian dream of affordable housing real again. Maclean’s editor Katie Underwood spoke to Peter Politis, Cochrane’s three-term mayor, about why the town is selling properties for the equivalent of a single purple banknote. |
Inuit artist Manasie Akpaliapik was born and raised on Baffin Island in a family of carvers who began teaching him when he was nine. Four years in a residential school failed to squash Akpaliapik’s artistic gifts, showcased in this solo exhibition at Montreal’s McCord Stewart Museum and featuring 40 haunting sculptures that merge pieces of whalebone, antlers and ivory. Akpaliapik, now 69, explores the interconnected worlds of Inuit mythology, nature and human life. His work also critiques the effects of colonialism in the Arctic: in Fear of Losing One’s Culture (above), he carved a split face into whalebone, capturing how his time at residential school fractured his identity. |
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