Ask which entertainment industry is growing fastest across Ontario and you probably won't be able to pin the answer down to one. Film production can be measured by how much money is being spent here, while live entertainment is a more obvious option when you think of packed venues and fast-selling, hard-to-come-by tickets. Digital entertainment is even more different because its growth is measured by its digital users.
So rather than trying to figure out which industry is leading the race, it makes more sense to look at where the most noticeable growth is happening and what's actually driving it.
Film and Television Still Have the Numbers Behind Them
Film and television are difficult to ignore, forming a clear example. Production spending has rebounded strongly recently, with Ontario continuing to attract major projects and foreign productions. Toronto is also (naturally) getting plenty of attention, but filming now stretches well beyond the city. Sudbury, North Bay, Ottawa, London, Niagara and other parts of the province are all more places where production is strong.
And there's a reason the industry has been able to keep attracting work: Ontario already has experienced crews, established studios and production infrastructure in place, while newer entertainment sectors have to build those networks as they grow. Film and television, however, have been developing them for years.
Digital Entertainment Has Become Much Harder To Separate Into Categories
Ontario has hundreds of companies working across video games, mobile entertainment, digital storytelling and other forms of interactive media. A lot of that work also goes far beyond Canada, which makes this part of the industry important from an export perspective as well as a local one. It’s become far more difficult to draw a neat line around the concept of "gaming," which could mean anything from someone sitting at home with a console game or picking up their phone and opening an entertainment app. Not only do these things not fall into completely separate categories anymore, but they're often competing for the same person's free time on the same devices.
That's one reason iGaming now deserves to be included when assessing which parts of Ontario's entertainment industry are expanding.
iGaming Is Now Part of the Wider Entertainment Picture
Since Ontario's regulated online gambling market opened, iGaming has moved much closer to the mainstream digital entertainment industry, overlapping with sports fandom and mobile gaming while offering the kind of immediate access people have become accustomed to elsewhere online.
Adults who choose to participate don't have to plan an evening around it or travel somewhere first; instead, they can access everything from sports betting to online slot games through the devices they’re already using at home. Platforms such as BetMGM Ontario are also a useful example because they bring sports betting and casino gaming together within one regulated digital platform, putting them into an increasingly in-demand part of the entertainment market: mobile screens.
From a Toronto perspective, the crossover with sports is particularly easy to see; someone following the Leafs or Raptors is already likely to be moving between live coverage, highlights, podcasts and conversations online. Sports betting simply adds another digital activity around something they're already following.
Of course, none of this makes iGaming interchangeable with television, video games or other forms of entertainment. What it does mean, however, is that it’s become too significant to leave out of the discussion when looking at how entertainment habits are changing across the province.
Live Entertainment Is Booming, But Growth Is Harder To Judge
Concert venues are active, festivals continue to pull crowds and major sporting events still bring huge numbers of people together. And after several years in which attending live events wasn't always possible, people have clearly returned to them.
The difficulty for the iGaming sector is working out how much of that represents long-term industry growth. Higher ticket prices can push spending upwards without necessarily meaning audiences have grown at the same rate. Some of the recent activity may also reflect people returning to habits they already had rather than adopting entirely new ones. This is quite different from what's happening in digital entertainment, where new platforms and changing habits are creating ways for people to spend their leisure time that weren't nearly as established a few years ago.
So Which Industries Are Growing Fastest?
Film and television still form one of the strongest cases because Ontario has the spending, infrastructure and production activity to back it up. Interactive media will continue to expand beyond the province, while iGaming has quickly become a noticeable part of people's digital entertainment choices. Live events remain a huge part of the local culture too, especially in Toronto. They're simply harder to compare directly with industries experiencing a broader shift towards digital access.
Ultimately, Ontario's entertainment economy isn't growing in one direction alone. Instead, what we're seeing instead is an established production industry continuing to attract major work at the same time as newer digital forms of entertainment become a bigger part of how people spend their free time.
