Sports fandom in Canada and the U.S. is becoming more active, more digital, and more commercially engaged.
As the NHL and NBA Playoffs unfold and anticipation builds for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, fans are showing strong interest across major sporting events.
The bigger story is how they are engaging.
Leger’s Spring Sports Betting & Fan Engagement Study finds that fans are moving into a broader ecosystem of streaming, betting, merchandise, social viewing, prediction markets, and AI-assisted decision-making. For leaders in lottery, gaming, and sports entertainment, this shift creates both a growth opportunity and a strategic challenge.
Canada’s Hockey Fan Base Is Getting Even Broader
The NHL remains the dominant sports event in Canada. Two-thirds of Canadians say they plan to follow the NHL Playoffs, compared to 43% of Americans. NHL interest is also up year-over-year in both countries, with much of the growth coming from more casual followers rather than only highly committed fans.
Casual fans are often the audience with the most room to grow. They may not be season-long followers, but they are showing up around major moments. For lottery and gaming brands, these event-driven fans represent a valuable segment: engaged enough to participate, but still open to nudges, education, promotions, and new forms of play.
In the U.S., the NBA Playoffs lead ahead of the NHL Playoffs and the 2026 FIFA World Cup, with 46% of Americans planning to follow them. In Canada, NBA Playoff followership sits at 34% and is also rising year-over-year.
The takeaway: the sports calendar is no longer defined by one event or one league. Engagement is becoming more fluid, and fans are moving across sports properties.
The World Cup Is Already Reaching Beyond Soccer Fans
The 2026 FIFA World Cup is drawing broad attention well ahead of the tournament. Nearly half of Canadians and four in ten Americans say they plan to follow the World Cup.
Among Canadian NBA Playoff followers, 77% say they plan to follow the World Cup. Among U.S. NHL and NBA Playoff followers, roughly seven in ten say the same.
This signals a major crossover opportunity. The World Cup is a mass-reach cultural moment with the potential to attract casual sports fans, national pride audiences, bettors, social viewers, and younger digital-first consumers.
Fans Are Turning Big Games into Bigger Experiences
Watching the game remains the anchor, but fans are adding more layers to the experience: streaming, social viewing, betting, merchandise, and prediction markets.
Among event followers, three key patterns stand out:
- Social viewing leads
Going out to bars, restaurants, or venues to watch is the most common activity in both Canada and the U.S. - U.S. fans are more commercially activated
Americans are significantly more likely than Canadians to pay for streaming subscriptions, place bets, purchase merchandise, attend games, and use prediction markets. - Canada shows room to convert interest into action.
Canadian sports fans are highly interested, which creates a clear opportunity for lottery and gaming leaders to move fans from watching to participating.
For lottery and gaming organizations, this could mean simplifying the path from interest to participation, creating stronger event-based offers, building more intuitive digital experiences, and using research to identify which fan segments are most ready to move from watching to playing.
AI Bettors Are Early Adopters of Prediction Markets
The connection between AI use and prediction markets is especially notable.
Regular AI bettors are significantly more likely than non-AI bettors to say they plan to use prediction markets. In Canada, 16% to 17% of regular AI bettors plan to use prediction markets across NHL, NBA, and World Cup events, compared to 2% or less of non-AI bettors. In the U.S., roughly one-quarter of regular AI bettors plan to use prediction markets across events.
This suggests that a more experimental, tools-driven bettor segment is emerging. These consumers are placing wagers, looking for information advantages, testing new platforms, and engaging with sports through a more analytical lens.
AI bettors may be early indicators that the broader market is heading toward more data-informed, interactive, and hybrid forms of sports engagement.
As these behaviours evolve, responsible gambling considerations will also need to keep pace, particularly around how AI tools may influence confidence, perceived control, and decision-making.
The next wave of sports engagement is already taking shape.
And it will be won by organizations that understand the fans behind the screen and give them more reasons to take part.
Methodology
This study was conducted by Leger through an online survey among the general population aged 18 and older in Canada and the United States. The Canadian sample included 1,521 respondents and the U.S. sample included 1,004 respondents.
Fieldwork was conducted from April 17 to 20, 2026. Data was weighted to ensure representative samples of each country’s general population.