Betty Gaming has been fined CA$120,000 by the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO) after a defect in its account-opening controls let nine people under the age of 19 create accounts, deposit money and gamble on Betty.ca.
The AGCO said the penalty covers failures in the operator’s age-verification and player-eligibility controls. A further 14 underage individuals were able to open accounts on the site but did not deposit funds.
The regulator was notified of the problem in November 2025, when Betty told the AGCO it had identified a vulnerability in the age-restriction and eligibility checks running on Betty.ca. Ontario’s Registrar’s Standards for Internet Gaming require operators to run effective safeguards against underage access and to validate player eligibility before an account is created.
AGCO points to pre-launch testing
Dr. Karin Schnarr, CEO and registrar of the AGCO, tied the penalty to what operators are expected to check before a system reaches players.
“The legal age requirement is one of the most basic and important safeguards in Ontario’s regulated gaming market. Young people must not be able to create accounts, deposit money, or gamble online. Registered operators are responsible for making sure their systems work before those systems go live.”
“When those responsibilities are not met, we will take action to protect young people and uphold confidence in Ontario’s regulated market.”
Betty has 15 days to appeal the registrar’s order to the Licence Appeal Tribunal (LAT), an adjudicative body within Tribunals Ontario that operates independently of the AGCO. The operator has not said publicly whether it will do so.
A run of Ontario penalties
The fine lands in a period of steady enforcement activity from the AGCO. Land-based operator Great Canadian Entertainment was penalised twice in quick succession in June and July, and in May the regulator issued CA$40,000 penalties to Relax Gaming and Arrise Solutions for allowing their games to appear on unregulated gambling sites accessible to Ontario players.
Ontario opened its regulated igaming market in April 2022 and remains the only Canadian province with a competitive private operator model, though Alberta went live with its own market on 13 July with 28 registered operators. Betty registered with the Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis (AGLC) ahead of that launch.
The AGCO’s enforcement record is one of the reasons Ontario is read as a benchmark by regulators elsewhere in Canada’s expanding online gambling landscape. Penalties are published, the standards are specific, and the regulator has shown it will act on self-reported faults rather than treat disclosure as a mitigating factor that closes the file.
Self-reporting did not avert the fine
The sequence matters for compliance teams. Betty found the vulnerability itself and told the AGCO. The regulator still issued a six-figure penalty, and Schnarr’s statement locates the failed obligation at pre-launch assurance: systems have to work before they go live.
Age verification is a solved technical problem in most regulated markets, handled through identity and database checks at registration. Failures usually come from configuration, integration or release management rather than from the verification service itself. Nine accounts reaching deposit and gameplay stage suggests the checks were either not applied consistently at registration or could be bypassed by a specific path through the signup flow. The AGCO has not published the technical detail.
Ontario sets the minimum gambling age at 19, in line with the province’s alcohol and cannabis rules. Most Canadian provinces use 19, with Alberta, Manitoba and Quebec at 18.
Timing against Betty’s expansion
The penalty arrives as Betty pushes beyond its home market. The Toronto-based icasino brand went live in Ontario in February 2023 and reported around 134,000 active players in the province at the end of 2025. It launched in the UK on 1 June 2026 under a Gambling Commission licence held by Betty Gaming CA Ltd, its first market outside Canada, backed by a $15m credit facility secured in April.
Management has described the UK entry as a proof of concept for a franchise-style model intended to take the brand into further markets. An adverse finding on underage access in the operator’s home jurisdiction is the kind of item that surfaces in future licensing reviews, and the UK Gambling Commission treats age verification failures as a licence condition breach with its own penalty regime.
Whether the AGCO’s action stands depends on whether Betty takes it to the LAT within the appeal window. The wider signal is aimed at every operator preparing a launch in Ontario or Alberta: the regulator is measuring compliance from the moment a system goes live, not from the moment a problem is reported.
Source: Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario
