New Brunswick Betting

New Brunswick has one lawful online betting site, and the bluntest statute in Canada about why there can be no other: online sports betting runs through the Atlantic Lottery Corporation’s PRO•LINE, which the province part-owns.

Atlantic Lottery, and Who Owns It

The operator is the Atlantic Lottery Corporation, whose online sportsbook is PRO•LINE, offered through Proline Stadium. ALC has run games since 1976 “on behalf of the governments of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador and Prince Edward Island” and is “owned by the four regional provincial governments — not private shareholders”. Its shareholder list names three provincial lottery bodies plus the “Province of Newfoundland and Labrador” itself, which has no lottery corporation. ALC’s terms of service define a “Game” as a “‘lottery scheme’ (as defined by the Criminal Code)… operated by ALC”, and its annual report calls ALC “the only legal and government-regulated provider of online gambling and sports-betting products in Atlantic Canada”, while other sites “cannot legally operate or advertise in Atlantic Canada, under Canadian and provincial law” — the operator’s own characterisation, with the statutory basis below.

Why No Private Sportsbook Can Be Licensed Here

Canada has no national gambling licence, and no province can create one for the internet. Two provisions of the Criminal Code do the work. Section 207(1)(a) makes it lawful “for the government of a province… to conduct and manage a lottery scheme in that province… in accordance with any law enacted by the legislature of that province” — the power the New Brunswick Lotteries and Gaming Corporation exercises. Paragraphs (1)(b) to (f) then let a province license charities, religious organisations, fairs and public places of amusement, and section 207(4)(c) removes the internet from all of them, excluding for those paragraphs any scheme “that is operated on or through a computer, video device, slot machine or a dice game”.

So a province may run an online betting operation itself under paragraph (1)(a), where the computer exclusion does not bite, but cannot license anyone else to run one. It is why New Brunswick publishes no register of private online sportsbooks: there is no licence for one to record.

The Statute Names ALC, and Limits Licences to Charities

The Gaming Control Act (S.N.B. 2008, c. G-1.5) sets the Corporation’s objects at section 5: to “develop, organize, undertake and conduct and manage lottery schemes on behalf of the government of the Province”. Section 6 makes it “an agent of the Crown”, section 1 defines “ALC” by name, and section 8(a) allows ALC to be designated “an agency of the Crown… for the purpose of conducting and managing a lottery scheme in this Province and the other provinces”.

Then comes the provision that settles it. Section 34(1) permits a licence to issue only “On application… by a charitable or religious organization”, and section 34.7 requires a licensee to operate only “at the gaming premises specified in the licence”. A commercial online sportsbook is neither a charity nor a religious organisation, and has no premises to specify. The Act’s only licensing regulation is the Charitable Gaming Licensees Regulation, which says as much in its title.

The Regulator

New Brunswick’s gambling regulator is identified more reliably from the statute than from a web page: the Act vests the function in the Registrar, under the Minister of Public Safety, within the Department of Justice and Public Safety. No live provincial page describing a gaming licensing branch could be retrieved, and there is no register of private online betting operators, because no licence class exists for one.

Minimum Age

Nineteen, uniformly across the four Atlantic provinces. ALC’s site-wide notice reads “You must be 19+ to purchase, play or redeem ALC products”, and its terms of service require at clause 3.1 that a player “must be at least 19 years of age, a resident of Atlantic Canada, physically located within Atlantic Canada”. New Brunswick regulation uses the same number in the charitable stream. But ALC notes that statutory bans on selling lottery products to minors exist in Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia specifically, so here the 19 bar on online play rests on the operator’s terms rather than provincial law.

Single-Event Betting Arrived in 2021

Before August 2021 no Canadian government could take a bet on one game: section 207(4)(b) excluded from “lottery scheme” any bookmaking or recording of bets “on any race or fight, or on a single sport event or athletic contest”, which is why provincial lotteries sold parlays only. The Safe and Regulated Sports Betting Act (S.C. 2021, c. 20, the bill numbered C-218) replaced those words with “on any horse-race”. Assented to on 29 June 2021, it took effect on 27 August 2021, the date of Justice Canada’s first point-in-time version of section 207 carrying the new text. Atlantic Canada’s own launch came later: the Nova Scotia Gaming Corporation’s annual report records that “Nova Scotia launched single-event sports betting in February 2022”, while ALC’s report loosely calls it “introduced in August 2021” — the federal date, not the product’s.

Horse Racing Runs on a Separate Federal Track

Pari-mutuel horse betting was never part of the lottery monopoly, and the 2021 amendment did not touch it: section 207(4)(b) lifts bets “on any horse-race” out of “lottery scheme”, and section 207(5) adds that nothing in section 207 authorises them “other than in accordance with section 204”. Section 204 is federal: subsection 204(3) forbids using a pari-mutuel system “unless the system has been approved by and its operation is carried on under the supervision of an officer appointed by the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food” — work done by the Canadian Pari-Mutuel Agency — and subsection 204(2) deems bets sent “by any means of telecommunication to the race-course of an association” to be made there.

Account wagering is not a nationwide entitlement, though. Section 77(2) of the Pari-Mutuel Betting Supervision Regulations lets an association open a telephone betting account for a resident of a province where it operates a track, and otherwise only where that province has no racing commission, holds no races, or its commission authorises the account. No New Brunswick racing commission could be reached, and that gap is recorded rather than filled. Woodbine Entertainment’s HPIbet ties eligibility in its terms of use to a “Home Market Area… established… by your Provincial Racing Commission”, and does not name New Brunswick among those areas on its rewards page. Whether a resident here can open an account could not be confirmed either way.

Prediction Markets and Event Contracts

The national position comes from securities regulators, not gambling ones. In April 2026 the Canadian Securities Administrators and the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization noted that “to date, no prediction market has been recognized as an exchange or registered as a dealer (or exempted from those requirements) by the CSA”. On 27 August 2026 the two issued Joint CSA and CIRO Staff Notice 91-307: “CSA staff’s view is that Event Contracts based on sports and entertainment events or outcomes should not be regulated within securities and derivatives legislation.” The notice pushes sports event contracts out of securities law without saying where they land — it mentions neither the Criminal Code nor provincial gaming legislation. No Atlantic gambling regulator or lottery body has said where such products land under provincial law; what Atlantic Canada published is the earlier notice, carried by New Brunswick’s Financial and Consumer Services Commission. Neither Kalshi nor Polymarket is named by FCNB, by any Atlantic gaming body, or in the notice itself.

Responsible Gambling

The Government of New Brunswick publishes a “Free provincial addiction and mental health helpline” on 1-866-355-5550, on a page covering anyone who has “a gambling issue”. ALC gives a different number, 1-800-461-1234, which no provincial page corroborates; the government’s is the one to use.