Sport Select is a group of
sport
Sport pertains to any form of Competition, competitive physical activity or game that aims to use, maintain, or improve physical ability and Skill, skills while providing enjoyment to participants and, in some cases, entertainment to specta ...
s
betting
Gambling (also known as betting or gaming) is the wagering of something of value ("the stakes") on a random event with the intent of winning something else of value, where instances of strategy are discounted. Gambling thus requires three eleme ...
games offered by
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
's lottery corporations. In
Quebec
Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...
, the program is known as Pari sportif; in Ontario and Atlantic Canada, it is known as Pro-Line while in
British Columbia
British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include rocky coastlines, sandy beaches, ...
, it is known as Sports Action. However, the rules for the games are similar in all
provinces
A province is almost always an administrative division within a country or state. The term derives from the ancient Roman ''provincia'', which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire's territorial possessions outsi ...
. Initially created to offer betting primarily on the
North America
North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...
n
major professional sports leagues, Sport Select has expanded to offer betting on competitions such as the English
Premier League
The Premier League (legal name: The Football Association Premier League Limited) is the highest level of the men's English football league system. Contested by 20 clubs, it operates on a system of promotion and relegation with the English Foo ...
and
college sports
College athletics encompasses non-professional, collegiate and university-level competitive sports and games.
World University Games
The first World University Games were held in 1923. There were originally called the ''Union Nationale des É ...
.
Sport Select (or equivalent) tickets are sold across Canada, through
Atlantic Lottery Corporation
The Atlantic Lottery Corporation (ALC) (French: Société des loteries de l'Atlantique), branded as simply Atlantic Lottery or Loto Atlantique, is a Canadian organization that provides government-regulated and responsible lottery products in Atlan ...
,
Loto-Québec
Loto-Québec is a crown corporation in the Canadian province of Quebec. Established in 1969, it is responsible for overseeing lottery and gaming in the province.
The corporation operates lottery games such as draw games and scratch cards, casi ...
,
Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation
Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation, known for corporate branding purposes simply as OLG since 2006, is a Crown corporation owned by the Government of Ontario, Canada. It is responsible for the province's lotteries, charity and Aboriginal c ...
,
Western Canada Lottery Corporation
The Western Canada Lottery Corporation (WCLC) is a Canadian non-profit organization founded in 1974 that operates lottery and gaming-related activities for its members, the governments of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Yukon, the Northwest T ...
, and
British Columbia Lottery Corporation
The British Columbia Lottery Corporation is a Canadian Crown corporation offering a range of gambling (AKA gaming) products including lottery tickets, casinos and legal online gambling. It is based in Kamloops, with a secondary office in Vanco ...
. In addition, some provinces are now accepting wagers over the
Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
.
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, and is the most popular Sport Select game. It does not offer betting on individual matches, partly because betting on a single sporting event was illegal under the
Criminal Code
A criminal code (or penal code) is a document that compiles all, or a significant amount of a particular jurisdiction's criminal law. Typically a criminal code will contain offences that are recognised in the jurisdiction, penalties that migh ...
up until 27 August 2021.
Therefore, Pro-Line is a parlay game where bettors wager on the outcome of anywhere from two to six (BC and Atlantic) and three to six (Quebec, Ontario and Western Canada) of the matches offered by the lottery corporation.
Decimal odds
Odds provide a measure of the likelihood of a particular outcome. They are calculated as the ratio of the number of events that produce that outcome to the number that do not. Odds are commonly used in gambling and statistics.
Odds also have ...
are quoted for individual matches, the odds for each selection being multiplied to calculate the potential payout of the ticket. For the ticket to pay out, all selections must be correct. Some provinces offer ''Combo Play'' which does not require all selections to be correct for a payout, but a Combo Play ticket is effectively nothing more than a number of similar, individual Pro-Line tickets rolled into one.
Overtime
Overtime is the amount of time someone works beyond normal working hours. The term is also used for the pay received for this time. Normal hours may be determined in several ways:
*by custom (what is considered healthy or reasonable by society), ...
is considered when determining results, but overtime in
soccer
Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...
is not.
In June 2022, Proline sportsbook announced themselves as the first Sportsbook partner of Major League Baseball (MLB) in Ontario.
PROLINE+
On August 27 2021, the
Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation (OLG) launched PROLINE+ to expand the sports betting selection in the province of
Ontario
Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...
. This coincided with the legalization of single-event betting in Canada, which opened the doors for provinces to start regulating and offering single-event betting as they wished.
PROLINE+ is a mobile-optimized site that offers betting markets for at least 12 popular sports, including hockey, football,
MMA
Mixed martial arts (MMA), sometimes referred to as cage fighting, no holds barred (NHB), and ultimate fighting, and originally referred to as Vale Tudo is a full-contact combat sport based on strike (attack), striking, grappling and ground f ...
, and tennis. Bettors can also bet live thanks to a built-in live event tracker.
Point spread
''Point Spread'' is similar to those games offered by other
bookmaker
A bookmaker, bookie, or turf accountant is an organization or a person that accepts and pays off bets on sporting and other events at agreed-upon odds.
History
The first bookmaker, Ogden, stood at Newmarket in 1795.
Range of events
Bookma ...
s where bettors are wagering against a quoted
point spread
Spread betting is any of various types of wagering on the outcome of an event where the pay-off is based on the accuracy of the wager, rather than a simple "win or lose" outcome, such as fixed-odds (or money-line) betting or parimutuel betting.
...
. Bettors can make predictions on the outcomes of two to twelve games, depending on the province. The payouts offered vary by province.
Over/Under
Also known as ''Total'' in Quebec, ''Over/Under'' is similar to those games offered by other
bookmaker
A bookmaker, bookie, or turf accountant is an organization or a person that accepts and pays off bets on sporting and other events at agreed-upon odds.
History
The first bookmaker, Ogden, stood at Newmarket in 1795.
Range of events
Bookma ...
s where bettors are wagering that the number of points scored in each match are over or under the quoted total. Bettors can make predictions on the outcomes of two to twelve games, depending on the province. The payouts offered vary by province.
Controversy
Odds
In recent years, Sport Select has come under increasingly heavy criticism from Canadian gamblers due to the poor odds it offers (from the gambler's perspective). A private bookmaker licensed in the
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...
or
Nevada
Nevada ( ; ) is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, Western region of the United States. It is bordered by Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. N ...
generally maintains an
overround
In gambling parlance, making a book is the practice of laying bets on the various possible outcomes of a single event. The phrase originates from the practice of recording such wagers in a hard-bound ledger (the 'book') and gives the English langu ...
(or "vig") of about 110%, meaning the bookmaker can expect to pay out $100 for every $110 that is wagered. In Canada, however, the overround for an individual match in Sport Select odds often exceeds 130%. To make matters worse for the bettor, the parlay requirement compounds the overround - the actual vigorish is a minimum of 160% but can climb to well over ''300%'' (if six selections are made). In jurisdictions such as the
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...
where genuine competition is allowed, bookies often pay bonuses for winning parlay bets to help offset the compounded vig. Sport Select does not.
Another controversial frustration for Pro-Line players in Atlantic Canada is the occurrence of Atlantic Lottery (ALC) 'capping' wagering on combinations and, on rare occasion, individual selections. This occurs when a significant amount of wagering is placed within a short span of time, typically on a specific combination of outcomes. The reasoning behind having such caps is to dissuade professional, or 'block', bettors from attempting to take advantage of potential flaws in the posted odds, and thus limits the liability for the corporation on a given combination of outcomes. Typical block betting behaviour involves placing large sums (often thousands of $) on a very small amount of combinations, trying to focus on perceived flaws as much as possible. Ultimately the Pro-Line game is meant to be recreational and not for professionals. Unlike online-only betting operations where all transactions must be submitted by identity verified accounts, Atlantic Lottery operates across a network of retailers where wagers are accepted anonymously, thus making it more susceptible to such 'block' bettors. The capping of combinations serves to limit pro-betting while keeping all outcomes open for betting, in any other combination. If a combination of outcomes is capped, any subsequent transaction submitted to the system attempting to wager on this particular combination is rejected. This can be an annoyance to non-professional (casual) bettors legitimately trying to wager on a capped combination, but experienced bettors have come to understand the reasoning and adjust their wagers accordingly.
Though most experts agree that the odds offered on Sport Select are such that even the sharpest punter would have no hope of making a
profit
Profit may refer to:
Business and law
* Profit (accounting), the difference between the purchase price and the costs of bringing to market
* Profit (economics), normal profit and economic profit
* Profit (real property), a nonpossessory intere ...
in the long term, some have. See, for instance, the 2007 Tax Court of Canada case R. v. Leblanc, in which two brothers netted $5.5 million on $50 million in bets over five years. The Tax Court ruled the profit was not taxable.
Ties
While ties are a common in
soccer
Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...
and used to be common in
ice hockey
Ice hockey (or simply hockey) is a team sport played on ice skates, usually on an ice skating rink with lines and markings specific to the sport. It belongs to a family of sports called hockey. In ice hockey, two opposing teams use ice hock ...
as well, unlike what would be the case with most bookmakers the rules of Sport Select provide for betting on "ties" in nearly every sport including
football
Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...
,
basketball
Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appr ...
and in some provinces
baseball
Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding tea ...
, even though ties are never allowed in basketball or baseball and are rare in football. Consequently, Sport Select mandates that any game decided by five points or less in basketball, three points or less in football or one run in baseball (where applicable) is declared a "tie". Furthermore, 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. In Ontario, a hockey game that goes to a shootout counts as both a Tie and a Visitor or Home win, depending on the outcome. The rule is loathed by most Canadian gamblers because the size of the winning margin often means little to the teams on the field/court. Many bettors believe the rule's true purpose is to confuse gamblers and allow for larger vigs.
NBA
Wagering on
NBA
The National Basketball Association (NBA) is a professional basketball league in North America. The league is composed of 30 teams (29 in the United States and 1 in Canada) and is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United St ...
games was an issue when
Toronto
Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...
and
Vancouver
Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the ...
were being considered for NBA expansion franchises, due to strict league rules at the time which prohibited gambling. The
Toronto Raptors
The Toronto Raptors are a Canadian professional basketball team based in Toronto. The Raptors compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the league's Eastern Conference Atlantic Division. They play their home games a ...
and
Vancouver Grizzlies
The Vancouver Grizzlies were a Canadian professional basketball team based in Vancouver. They were part of the Midwest Division of the Western Conference of the National Basketball Association (NBA). The team was established in 1995, along w ...
began play in the league in 1995 only after the provincial lottery corporations agreed to stop offering wagering on all NBA games. As part of the agreement, the Raptors paid $5 million in its first three years and $1 million annually afterwards to its charitable foundation to compensate the Ontario provincial lottery corporation for its loss of revenue.
When the
Grizzlies relocated to Memphis in 2001, British Columbia resumed allowing wagering on NBA games. In 2010, it was revealed that the Ontario Lottery Gaming Corporation and the Raptors were in negotiations to return wagering on NBA games to the province. In September 2016, it was announced that an agreement had been reached between the parties to allow betting on NBA games on Pro-Line in Ontario to resume beginning with the 2016-17 season.
The move is projected to generate $5-10 million in profit for the province.
References
{{Reflist
Lotteries in Canada
Sports betting