PointsBet Canada accepts two-day Ontario suspension

PointsBet Canada has agreed to a two-day suspension of its Ontario gaming site, settling the AGCO's case over its alleged failure to detect and report suspicious bets on NBA player Jontay Porter. The Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO), the province's gambling regulator, announced the settlement on 20 October 2026. It resolves the proceeding the AGCO opened in February, when it proposed a five-day suspension of PointsBet's igaming registration, the first suspension the regulator had sought in Ontario's regulated online market.

Under the settlement, PointsBet will also commission an independent audit, with both the auditor and the audit method approved by the AGCO, and has committed to fixing whatever the audit finds. That remediation will be checked independently. The AGCO says the settlement concludes the regulatory proceeding.

When the site goes offline

Not yet decided. Both an AGCO spokesperson and PointsBet told reporters that the two days have not been scheduled; Canadian Gaming Business reports that the dates need the regulator's approval. If you play at PointsBet in Ontario, watch for a notice from the operator before the suspension starts.

Canadian Gaming Business also reports that a five-day hearing at the Licence Appeal Tribunal, where PointsBet had appealed the proposed order, was due to begin on 19 October, and that PointsBet withdrew its appeal as part of the deal.

What the AGCO said went wrong

Porter, then a Toronto Raptors player, was at the centre of a 2024 bet-rigging scheme that later became part of a US criminal investigation. According to the AGCO's February release, the regulator asked every Ontario sportsbook in early 2024 whether it had offered bets on Porter and whether it had detected and reported anything suspicious. PointsBet, "after significant delay", said it had not offered such bets.

In October 2025, a US Department of Justice indictment showed the Porter case was part of a broader insider betting scheme, and the AGCO asked operators to check again. Eighteen months after its first answer, PointsBet acknowledged that it had in fact offered betting on Porter in those games. The AGCO then reviewed PointsBet's wagering data and said it confirmed the signs of suspicious betting at the heart of the scheme. In the regulator's words, "these wagers should have been detected and reported at the time the betting occurred." The AGCO described the issue as an "alleged systemic failure" to monitor, detect, document and report suspicious betting patterns.

Why sportsbooks have to flag odd bets

Licensed sportsbooks see betting patterns before anyone else does. When a lot of money suddenly lands on an obscure market, such as one player's statistics in a single game, that can be a sign someone knows the result in advance. Ontario requires operators to monitor for this kind of unusual activity and report it immediately. The AGCO's point is that a report reaches leagues, integrity monitors, regulators and police, and warns other sportsbooks so they can stop taking compromised bets.

"Safeguarding the integrity of sports and Ontario's sports betting market is a top priority for the AGCO," Dr. Karin Schnarr, the AGCO's Chief Executive Officer and Registrar, said when the suspension was first proposed in February. "We require all operators to have robust systems and comprehensive staff training in place to reliably detect and report suspicious activity. Our regulatory framework is clear—operators must be equipped to detect and effectively respond to integrity risks, and we will take appropriate action when these standards are not met."

It is not PointsBet's first penalty in Ontario. The AGCO fined the operator in May 2022 for advertising and inducement violations and again in November 2023 for breaching Ontario's responsible gambling standards.

The AGCO has been active on other fronts too, including a penalty for theScore Bet after it refused cash-out offers a player had accepted. On the integrity side, the NBA has told its partner sportsbooks to drop opening-tip bets and under parlays. Elsewhere in Canada, Alberta's igaming transition window has closed, with 50 licensed sites from 29 companies live.