OTTAWA — Canadian governments have cumulatively spent $1 billion preparing to co-host the 2026 FIFA World Cup, but they still lack the tools to determine whether tournaments like this one will deliver an economic win.

The challenge is significant enough that earlier this week, Ottawa tasked a research hub at Toronto Metropolitan University with developing better ways to measure the economic impact of sport in Canada.

“We know it’s lower than other countries, and in order to change that we really need to measure why,” said Adam van Koeverden, the federal secretary of state for sport, in an interview with The Logic.

On Monday, Ottawa announced it would give $600,000 to the university’s Future of Sport Lab to create a FIFA 2026 Legacy Incubation Hub to scale and commercialize sport-innovation startups. The government has also asked the hub to develop more sophisticated methods of measuring sport’s economic contribution, including the returns generated by large-scale events like the World Cup.

Statistics Canada estimates the sports sector contributed about $8.3 billion in 2024, representing just 0.3 per cent of Canada’s gross domestic product (GDP). While country-by-country numbers are sparse, the data available suggests that figure trails those of several peer countries. “It’s quite stark,” said van Koeverden, a former athlete and 2004 Olympic gold medalist in sprint kayaking. 

A World Economic Forum report published earlier this year found sport accounted for 2.6 per cent of GDP in the United Kingdom in 2021 and two per cent of GDP in Japan in 2024. 

A World Economic Forum report published earlier this year found sport accounted for 2.6 per cent of GDP in the United Kingdom in 2021 and two per cent of GDP in Japan in 2024. 

The Canadian estimates are conservative, and may underrepresent how sports propel Canada’s economy, said Cheri Bradish, director of the Future of Sport Lab. Traditional sport business models look at the number of visitors that come into the country and how much they spend on average, but leave out other economic activity, she said.

In the case of this World Cup tournament, there’s been less investment in new major facilities than for previous mega events, but the federal government’s decision to kick in $2.1 million for a Canadian Tire Jumpstart program to build 25 community soccer fields across the country will generate economic activity. “It’s a different kind of legacy,” Bradish said. 

For policymakers, the struggle to accurately measure sport’s economic impact complicates decisions about future investments. FIFA estimates the 2026 tournament will generate a $3.8 billion economic boost for Canada, including a $2 billion increase in GDP. But economists caution that many such forecasts overstate the benefits, and few are fully realized.

Large sporting events can displace regular tourism and shift spending that would have occurred elsewhere in the economy, said Scott Neiderjohn, director of the Free Enterprise Center at Concordia University Wisconsin. 

“For example, a visitor who comes to Toronto for a World Cup match may spend money that wouldn’t otherwise have been spent in Canada,” Niederjohn said. “But if local residents simply redirect entertainment spending from other activities to World Cup events, the net gain is much smaller.”

Measuring the long-term impacts can be even more difficult, he said. 

“If Canada sees increased tourism five years after 2026, how much came from World Cup exposure versus exchange rates, airline capacity, immigration patterns or broader marketing campaigns?” Niederjohn said. “That’s where better data would be helpful, but is expensive to acquire.”

A post-mortem report on the 2010 Olympic Winter Games found a small boost in jobs and infrastructure spending, but no evidence of economy-wide gains. The research team at the University of British Columbia that authored the report said they didn’t have enough information to say whether the benefits lasted. 

“There is also insufficient data to conduct a more integrative analysis to show the balance between inputs to host the Games and outputs generated from the Games,” the report stated. 

In the case of this year’s tournament, there are signs the event hasn’t generated the immediate surge in tourism and economic activity organizers had hoped. As The Logic previously reported, host cities Toronto and Vancouver have yet to experience the expected hotel-booking boom. Visa approvals for foreign soccer fans also appeared low in the lead-up to the tournament, despite the government’s goal of attracting more than a million visitors.

Some benefits will emerge long after the final match, though, said van Koeverden. 

The federal government contributed $473 million to the tournament, $126 million of which went to upgrading Toronto’s BMO Field and Vancouver’s BC Place and developing FIFA training facilities. Van Koeverden said the improvements are an investment that will let the venues host more conventions, concerts and international sporting events in the future.

Canada intends to pursue other marquee global sports events after the World Cup, van Koeverden added, but wants stronger evidence that those investments generate returns.“We are the best sport hosting nation in the world, but we also want to make sure that that pays off for our economy,” he said. 

Even with more data, he said not all the benefits will show up in the economic figures. 

“How happy and joyful people are—that doesn’t necessarily factor into these GDP calculations and positive economic outputs,” he said. “But they’re very important and also worthy of investment.”