By: Samuel Brito
It’s a summer afternoon, getting back from work after a long day. The TV is turned on, and right away catchy upbeat music plays. The World Cup is almost here. You listen to the radio and hear promotions everywhere. Neighbours ask if you’ll watch the games.
On the streets, everyone wears the country’s jersey, collect sticker albums with all the teams and squads, and make predictions of who’s going to lift the trophy. The soccer passion has conquered the country and is here to stay for a month.
In Canada, soccer has never been such an impactful sport, falling behind hockey and baseball, especially in media. While people play soccer a lot in broadcasting it has never been one of Canada’s big sports.
With the World Cup coming to North America, it’s undeniable that soccer interest has grown, while also being supported by the current performances of the Canada’s national soccer team.
According to World Altas, soccer is the most popular sport in the world with 3.5 billion fans as of 2025. Its influence can be seen everywhere from ads, videogames, movies, even conflicts.
The sport includes two of the most viewed sport tournaments in the world, such as the World Cup and the Champions League, with the World cup ranking first as the most popular sport event in the planet, registering 2.87 billion viewers that watched at least one minute of the 2022 Qatar World Cup, according to FIFA.
The final between Argentina and France reached up to 10 million viewers in Canada, and up to 1.5 billion globally.
Two other great examples of soccer’s impact across the world in terms of viewership are the Champions League final and ‘El Clasico’.
The Champions League being the most watched soccer club tournament in Europe, reached a viewership of more than 140 million viewers in its 2023 final, where the Spanish side of Real Madrid, one of the biggest teams in the world in terms of global fanbase, defeated the German side Borussia Dortmund 2-0.
For El Clasico, which faces Spanish teams Real Madrid against Barcelona (former teams of Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi) the last match between both teams, which ended with Madrid’s win for 2-1, reached a global audience over 600 million viewers in Oct. 26.
To understand the broadcasting side of the sport in the country, from understanding how it came here, and how it’s developed, lays the groundwork for expanding the topic.
Canada’s history with soccer has parallels with other countries that belonged to the British Empire, according to University of Toronto Associate Emeritus Professor Dave Cooper.
Colonization was also a factor for the sport to spread from England to Europe, and from there to the rest of the world to their respective colonies, a process known as globalization.
Another key factor Cooper mentions is how accessible it was to play the sport.
“The local population found that it was such an easy game to play because all you needed was a ball,” Cooper says. “It was very much a popular game.”
In Canada more specifically, it started to be organized in the late 19th century, with Canada being one of the best countries regarding soccer players formation and development. However, it didn’t make the sport organized like what happened in England, and only in the mid 20th century did it become professional.
“At the professional level, some places struggled to get more than 5,000 to 10,000 spectators,” Cooper says, while adding the early popularity of the sport, regarding spectators, but also mentioned that people still played the sports in great numbers. “And for quite a while, Canada had one of the best youth programs in the world. There were large numbers of young boys and girls … playing the game.”
And while the sport didn’t get much attention from the media compared to hockey or baseball, it was still quite popular among people, especially immigrants coming to the country, either from Europe or South America, since these were the regions where the sport was better received, with descendants keeping their passion, even if they were born in Canada.
“It was played by immigrants and immigrants who stayed and lived in the country. And they grew up,”
-Dave Cooper
Thanks to streaming services and the arrival of TV, soccer started to be more accessible in the media, boosting its popularity.
The switch for the sport to be broadcasted on TV not only helped fans to watch the games more easily or be more accessible, but also for those who worked in the industry, more specifically, soccer analysts.
Professor Emeritus at University of British Columbia, Ian Franks came to Canada from the U.K. in the 1970s and worked as a soccer analyst. He expands on how his work back in the day was key for soccer coaches since most of them couldn’t remember all aspects of the game.
“We did a whole bunch of different research studies as well,” Franks says. “We looked at coaches and how good they were at remembering events in the game.”
However, he recalls how much change the arrival of the World Cup on TV in the 1980s made, especially since he and his team were able to analyse games more easily with more resources.
“When we started to analyze the games, we would videotape all of the (…) World Cup,” he discussed how analysis was done before TV by using pencils and papers, to then move to computers programs to give information to coaches in real-time at halftime.
He says he keeps the videotapes from the games to make his analysis back in the 80s and 90s, mostly from the World Cup, although he also analysed European Leagues and competitions.
With the sports being increasingly accessible on the TV, his job became easier and more specific.
“You have the games, and you have a video of the games, you can stop it, you can check your data, be able to collect good data on it. So, we collected an enormous amount of data on games, both in Europe and the World Cup,” Franks says.
Talking a bit more in general, the late arrival of soccer tournaments to the country, brings up the question, which is what media companies consider which sport events they should get the rights of the show in the country?
There’s a whole process companies need to go through to get the rights of any sporting events, and there’s more talks regarding if it’s worth it or not.
Assistant Professor at Toronto Metropolitan University Karen Sebesta, which was CBC executive producer and lead the CBC working team in the Olympics, talked about how this process usually work depending on the event.
For the World Cup she says, FIFA let broadcast media make offers from every part of the world, selling what’s called the domestic rights.
“FIFA, has these broadcasting rights based on the globe, on the region, and then they can sell what’s called the domestic coverage rights,” Sebesta says. “The domestic rights belong to a broadcaster and the country and there can be many of them in every country, because you see that is a great way for FIFA to make money.”
The right of a sports tournament not only includes the TV part of it, but also all the behind the cameras, travel, commentators, among others which also add to the overall cost.
An important factor companies consider when choosing is their audience, so while a sport event can be extremely relevant and popular globally, if it doesn’t appeal to their audiences, it will probably not be considered.
“In Canada, broadcasters bid based on their audience, so for example, soccer, CBC was one of the first broadcasters to cover soccer, and in the past, we’ve paid and we’ve covered soccer, but today, in 2025, CBC airs MLSC, the women’s northern soccer league,” Sebesta says about CBC’s coverage of soccer.
To make these decisions, companies gather a team to discuss what the next steps to take will be, and choose whether they will make an offer or not.
“(CBC) would put in a responsible bid, they would talk to the financial people, they would think about what do the productions cost, and they would put in their bid, and so FIFA sits there and waits, and takes the bids, and the biggest money gets it, sometimes, nobody bids,” she says.
“(Media companies) would put in a responsible bid, they would talk to the financial people, they would think about what do the productions cost, and they would put in their bid, and so FIFA sits there and waits, and takes the bids, and the biggest money gets it, sometimes, nobody bids,”
– Karen Sebesta
With an event already underway, she says decisions still need to be made by companies on which games prioritize to stream on TV. While the World Cup is relatively simple to plan because the schedule is already organized, matchups, time zones, and how relevant a specific game may be for the local audience, all make their impact regarding what to prioritize.
In the past, this decision when multiple games couldn’t be broadcasted at the same time, was to be made ahead of time considering these previous factors.
“I will speak from domestic producing in Canada, World Cup soccer, Canada, my first decision is, is Canada playing, if Canada is playing, I’m showing the game, because I am the Canadian broadcaster, so Canada plays,” she says. “I show the game, I don’t even care if, you know, Italy’s playing, or Leo Messi on another team, it doesn’t matter.”
As the World Cup draws closer, attention will grow among people. An event like this hasn’t been hosted in this country for a while, so to understand how we got to this point, it’s important to look at things beyond the actual game.