Like any community, Whistler, despite its relative youthfulness, has a long relationship with gambling.
For as long as settlers have occupied the area they called Alta Lake, they’ve found a way to “make it interesting,” as the old saying goes.
According to the Whistler Museum, the Alta Lake Community Club organized poker games as far back as the winter of 1959-60, though those games were likely low stakes and played amongst neighbours.
There was also an assortment of casino night-styled fundraisers, and even a push for proper legalization of gambling in 1982.
“There was a group called the Concerned Citizens for Whistler that was in support of bringing gambling to Whistler to provide more revenue and stable year-round employment and help Whistler out of its economic troubles,” relayed the Museum’s Allyn Pringle, in an email.
The legalization of gambling being provincial jurisdiction, the group didn’t make much headway, Pringle noted, though the discussion never fully died out.
B.C.’s first legal casino opened in 1999, “but I haven’t heard of any sanctioned gambling establishments of any kind opening in Whistler,” Pringle added.
That’s not to say any silly old laws were going to get in the way of a good wager.
For as long as gambling has been outlawed, people have found workarounds (or they just outright ignored the law—according to the federal government, Canadians spent more than $10 billion on black-market bets in 2020, and another $4 billion in “grey-market” wagers).
When the British first planted their flags on what is now called Canadian soil, they brought their laws with them—including a ban on dice. It was a decree that few people paid attention to in the colonies, and one under which few, if any, were prosecuted.
Still, “in theory, Englishmen could still be prosecuted under an act of Henry VIII as late as 1960,” notes one paper published by the University of Calgary in 1983.
Federally, the Canadian government first outlawed all forms of gambling in 1892. Lotteries weren’t legalized until 1969, and another amendment in 1985 effectively shifted responsibility for gambling to the provinces.
So, the liberalization of gambling has been a constantly evolving process since Day 1.
But these days, thanks to smartphone technology and a change to federal law that came into effect in 2021, it’s easier than ever to put your hard-earned cash on the line.
If you’ve spent any time watching a hockey game this year, or any sporting event, really, you’ll know what I’m getting at—an endless parade of sleekly produced adds enticing you to gamble has invaded your sports watching.
They’re on the glass; the ice; the boards.
They’re running back-to-back-to-back during commercial breaks, and sponsoring periods of a hockey game to get more eyeballs.
You can even bet on the game you’re watching right now! Wouldn’t that make it more exciting?
And remember sports journalist Cabbie Richards from The Score? As Sportsnet’s “executive producer of betting content,” he shouts betting odds at you during breaks in the game now. That’s all he does. You love it.
It happened seemingly overnight, but these sports betting ads now take up a good chunk of the advertising we’re subjected to—an army of deep-pocketed gambling companies and websites aiming to buy up every inch of breathable airspace.
I don’t know what’s worse: the casual, on-demand dopamine hits these ads are endlessly promoting or the fact that the websites in question are not even legal in B.C.
That’s right: those ads you’ve been seeing during every sporting event you watch in British Columbia aren’t even targeting you—they’re mostly meant for the big gamblers (known in the industry as “whales”) out East in Ontario, where the government legalized such companies last year.
In B.C., only the BC Lottery Corporation (BCLC), a Crown corporation, is permitted to operate single-sports betting (which it does through its site, PlayNow.com).
Any expansion of the market to other companies would be a political decision up to the provincial Ministry of Finance, a spokesperson with BCLC told Pique.
I never thought I would long for the days of nonstop cheeky beer and car commercials, or those horrendous East Side Mario’s commercials they aired during NHL playoffs each year (“eh badda-boom badda-bing!”)—but here we are.
Those ads were obnoxious—sometimes advertising is annoying by design—but the gambling commercials hit differently. Probably because the potential negative effects of gambling are so obvious.
Head to scholar.google.ca and type in “research on gambling addiction” to see for yourself. The literature on the subject is robust, to say the least.
Pathological gambling is credibly linked to higher rates of mood, personality and anxiety disorders, as well as higher rates of alcohol, nicotine and drug use.
The social and familial costs of addiction gambling—such as debt, domestic abuse and even suicide—are also well documented.
So, the proliferation of sexy gambling app adds on our TVs—during sporting events watched by countless children, starring their favourite athletes and movie stars—is cause for concern for many.
Like Dr. Robert Williams, a professor in the faculty of health sciences at the University of Lethbridge and a research coordinator with the Alberta Gambling Research Institute, who told CBC News last year he’s concerned about how the advertisements might impact younger audiences.
“It’s not a positive thing, from a public health perspective,” Williams said.
Like all things, moderation is key.
Gambling isn’t always toxic, or a problem. According to one study published in the U.K. in 2019, between 40 and 80 per cent of adults participated in gambling in the previous 12 months, though for most it was a form of casual entertainment or in a social setting.
To go full devil’s advocate, regulated gambling provides enormous economic benefits to the communities and jurisdictions in which it operates, and there is some evidence of positive health impacts (as long as your relationship to gambling itself doesn’t cross into problem territory).
A study published in Ontario in 2021 found that “recreational and casual gamblers were less likely to have diabetes, anxiety disorders, mood disorders, and high blood pressure than their non-gambling counterparts,” adding, “it has been hypothesized that this positive association is due to gambling as a source of socialization, relaxation or hopefulness, though evidence does not exist to support a mechanism for this relationship.”
Either way, given the advertising dollars brought in by these no-doubt lucrative, national campaigns, I’m willing to bet a forceful rebuke from Canada’s TV broadcasters is not in the cards anytime soon.
