Canada’s provincial governments are sponsoring a group of sports betting games known as ‘Sport Select’. The program has different names; for example, in Ontario and Atlantic Canada the program is known as Pro-Line, in French speaking Quebec it is known as Pari Sportif, while in British Columbia, it is called Sports Action. The rules for the games are similar in all provinces.
Initially created to offer betting mainly on the North American major professional sports leagues, Sport Select has expanded and is now offering betting on competitions such as the English Premier Soccer League and college sports.
Tickets for Sport Select – or the equivalent wherever you live – can be purchased at all lottery centers across Canada, creating one of the densest sports betting networks in the world. In addition, some provinces are now even accepting wagers over the Internet.
Sport Select games
Each province offers versions of these three games under rules similar to those described below:
Pro-Line
Known as Oddset in British Columbia and Mise-O-Jeu in Quebec, Pro-Line offers fixed-odds sports betting. This is the most popular of the Sport Select games. Betting is not offered on individual matches, because betting on a single sporting event is technically illegal under the Criminal Code of Canada. To overcome this, Pro-Line offers a parlay game where bettors wager on the outcome of anywhere from three to six of the matches offered by the lottery corporation. Decimal odds are quoted for individual matches and the odds for each selection are multiplied to calculate the potential payout of the ticket. All selections must be correct for the ticket to pay out.
Some provinces offer a ‘Combo Play’ which does not require all selections to be correct for a payout, but the Combo Play ticket is effectively nothing more than a number of similar, individual Pro-Line tickets rolled into one. Overtime is taken into account when determining results, but shootouts, both in ice hockey and in soccer are ignored.
Point spread
Point Spread is similar to those games offered by other bookmakers where bettors are wagering against a quoted point spread. Bettors can predict the outcomes of anything from two to twelve games, depending on the province. The payouts offered vary from one province to another.
Over/Under
Also known as Total in Quebec, Over/Under is similar to those games offered by other bookmakers where bettors wager that the total number of points scored in each match is over or under the quoted total. Bettors can predict the outcomes of between three and twelve games, depending on the province and again the payouts vary by province.
The Controversy
Odds
From the gambler’s point of view, Sport Select offers poor odds and in recent years it has come under increasingly heavy criticism from Canadian gamblers. Private bookmakers licensed in the United Kingdom or Nevada generally maintain an overround, or “vig” of about 110%, which means that the bookmaker can expect to pay out $100 for every $110 that is wagered.
In Canada, however, this overround for an individual match in Sport Select odds often exceeds 130%. Making matters even worse for the bettor, the parlay requirement compounds the overround and the actual vigorish is a minimum of 160% but can climb to well over 300% if six selections are made.
Most experts agree that the odds offered on Sport Select are such that even the sharpest punter has no chance of making a profit in the long term.
Ties
Even though draws or ties are common in soccer and used to be common in ice hockey, this is unlikely to be the case with most bookmakers. The rules of Sport Select provide for betting on “ties” in nearly every sport including football, basketball and in some provinces baseball, although a tied result is not possible in basketball or baseball and is rare in football.
Nevertheless, Sport Select directs that all games decided by five points or less in basketball, three points or less in football or one run in baseball is declared a “tie”. Moreover, when the NHL introduced shootouts in for the 2005-06 season the lottery corporations, in contrast to most bookmakers, quickly ruled that shootout results would not count, specifically so they could keep offering “ties” in hockey.
This tie rule is loathed by most Canadian gamblers because the size of the winning margin often means little to the teams on the field or court. Many bettors believe the rule’s sole purpose is to confuse gamblers and allow for larger vigs.
Canadian NHL teams
Because they do not receive a portion of the profits from NHL betting, Canada’s NHL teams, especially those in the smaller markets are becoming increasingly agitated. These clubs argue that the provinces are making millions of dollars on events for which they assume all responsibility, expense and risk and that those revenues would disappear if the clubs were to move or fold.
The 2004-05 NHL lockout, which cost the provinces more than $100 million in lost revenues reinforced these arguments. But most provinces have rejected the request outright – although the British Columbia Lottery Corporation agreed to license the Vancouver Canucks’ name and logo for a fee while the government of Alberta agreed to allow the Calgary Flames and Edmonton Oilers to conduct a separate, joint lottery.
The different NHL teams in Canada are the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Ottawa Senators, the Montreal Canadiens, the Vancouver Canucks, the Calgary Flames and the Edmonton Oilers.
Ontario and the NBA
Meantime, in Ontario, wagering on NBA games nearly cost Toronto an NBA franchise due to the strict league rules prohibiting gambling. Only after the provincial lottery corporation agreed to stop offering these wagers did the Toronto Raptors begin to play in the league. Up to 2004, the Raptors were still being forced to pay millions of dollars each year into a charitable fund and to the provincial lottery corporation to compensate it for the ‘perceived’ loss of revenue. If the NBA decides to put a team in Las Vegas the same could easily happen.
College and youth sports
Provinces have started offering odds on college basketball and college football, much to the annoyance of the NCAA and others who would like to keep gambling out of amateur sport. At the start of the 2004-05 NHL lockout, Loto-Qu?bec caused a major uproar when they attempted to offer odds on QMJHL games in order to compensate for lost revenue. Players in this major junior league are aged 16 to 20 and make about $30 per week in pocket money. Faced with this intense opposition, wagering on QMJHL games was quietly abandoned.
Responses
Many Canadian gamblers have taken advantage of the Internet and are starting to do business with reputable offshore bookmakers or betting exchanges in response to what is perceived as extreme arrogance and a lack of respect from ‘the state bookmaker’.
The exchanges can offer odds that are up to 50% better than what would be offered for an individual match on Sport Select. Moreover, both traditional bookmakers and exchanges offer single sports betting, thus greatly increasing a bettor’s chances of winning.
Some analysts claim that the provincial lottery corporations are already losing more revenue to the offshore firms than they make by tilting the rules and odds in their favor. There are only very rough estimates of the amounts of money the provinces are losing to offshore competition, but the sums are believed to run to millions.
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