Travelling for Sports Big Business

Data from the National Travel Survey and Visitor Travel Survey from the fourth quarter of 2025 shows that Canadians are willing to travel for sports, and it doesn’t take something as major as the World Cup to convince us to do it. “Sports and entertainment are coming together, and people are looking to build serious memories around attending iconic events,” Duane Penner, the vice-president of sales for Winnipeg-based Roadtrips told TravelPulse Canada earlier this year. It’s a trend that is continuing apace.

In 2025, Canadians took 10.8 million trips that included watching a sporting event. We travel for sports too: 6.8 million Canadians took a trip during which at least one member of their travelling party played an individual or team sport.  

Sports are also popular for inbound travellers. According to the report, in 2024, an estimated 759,000 overseas and United States visitors who flew to Canada by commercial air reported attending a sports event as a spectator during their trip. 

Numbers for this year, which won’t be released until 2027, will reflect the numbers of visitors who travelled to Canada or within Canada to see the beautiful game. Early hotel data from Toronto and Vancouver showed softer bookings than were anticipated and hoped for, despite creative activations and offers being on offer for visitors.

Related: Vancouver Hotels Prepare to Face Challenges of FIFA World Cup

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