Professional Soccer Growth in Canada: Finding the Right Formula to Grow the Beautiful Game

My masters thesis about something I love

For my master’s thesis, I wanted to focus on something I have cared about for over 10 years - soccer. I’ve come a long way from the ignorant young coach who just cared maybe a little too much. I can now say I’m one of only a handful of people in the world who defined soccer and created a soccer data collection system, worked as a data scientist for a professional league in Canada, and have had the privilege to work with several sporting organizations at some of the highest levels. I tend to go where my interests lie and sports, especially soccer, have been that.

Which brings me to my topic. My topic of choice was, what cities would be good expansion locations for a Canadian professional league? The Canadian Premier League (CPL…and former employer) already has eight clubs and Project 8 (P8), the women’s league launching in 2025, has three signed up at the time of writing. However, there’s context worth sharing.

Both the CPL and P8 have bet on the 2026 World Cup, which Canada is co-hosting. That bet is that soccer fandom, interest, or whatever you want to call it will boom after that World Cup. But will it? There are many soccer fans in Canada, some I’ve dubbed the “Snobs”, for lack of a better term, because they are “snobs” to their favourite league. These are fans of the EPL, La Liga, and other home country leagues. The fans that the CPL and P8 would want are the ones who care about what’s happening in their backyard. Anyway, this is a bit of a digression, but the point is that it’s a big bet.

Heck, does hosting a World Cup even help grow soccer in one’s country? And if so, how? Why? And what cities would be good locations? Well, my thesis was about that and I’m happy to share.



Question 1: Does hosting a World Cup grow professional soccer in a host country?
Answer 1: Uhhh kind of.

From doing tons of research and looking at several World Cups and the growth of professional clubs in the host country post-World Cup, I wouldn’t say it was the reason, but it got the ball rolling. Many leagues got their boost once organizations and communities set standards and guidelines. The MLS for example, went huge after the Men’s national team did well in a World Cup, following the IFAB rules, and having soccer-specific stadiums. Again, not really around the hosting of the World Cup. But a league was there once the interest grew.

So, assuming the Canadian leagues have a good structure, guidelines, standards, etc., etc., in place and the spark gets sparked from the 2026 World Cup, what next? This brings me to question 2.



Question 2: What cities would be good expansion locations for a professional soccer club in Canada?
Answer 2: Halifax, Hamilton, Winnipeg, Surrey, London, Quebec City, Kitchener, Windsor, and Moncton. Honourable mentions to Sherbrooke, PEI, Kelowna, and Barrie.

Alright, so first thing is first, what’s my definition of a “good” expansion location? To me, a “good” expansion location depends. It depends purely on what is this club trying to do based on ownership models. In the case of CPL and P8, they adhere to a franchise model. This (simply) means that the name of the game is to grow the value of the club as much as possible over time - similar to a house. The MLS is the same.

If that’s the case, what matters to grow a club’s value over time? Well looking at a bunch of research, there are tons of factors like population, GDP per capita, etc., etc. I won’t bore you with them all because that’s what my thesis is there for (reach out to me if you’re interested in reading it!). However, by training a machine-learning model on a bunch of variables and MLS club value data, we can have an idea of what impacts the growth of a club’s value.

If you’d like to see a visualization of the three most important features for determining a high club value, please click the image below. It will take you to a visual on my Tableau Public profile.

However, what’s interesting about the model is that smaller cities tend to grow more over time. Cities like Los Angeles, New York City, and Chicago do not grow a lot. However, cities like Columbus, Kansas City, and Washington DC have big growth. Some of my thoughts, feelings, and opinions as to why this is a thing is because smaller cities have fewer things to do and less money to spend on things.

For those of you who are familiar with European soccer, I immediately think of Borussia Dortmund and the relationship it has with the city of Dortmund. When I visited Dortmund, I could tell it wasn’t the most fanciful of places (albeit a very lovely town). A friend of mine told me, “There’s nothing in Dortmund but the football team.” Dortmund also has less than half the GDP per Capita of Munich. However, the average attendance of a Borussia Dortmund match is over 80,000. Why? They absolutely love their club.

In fact, if we look at the CPL the two cities that had the most attendance during the 2023 season were HFX Wanderers and Forge FC, based out of Halifax and Hamilton respectively. Both cities are below the average GDP per Capita of the cities I analyzed. It seems as though something is there.

However, there is one feature that is the most important: the amount of time you’ve existed as a club. For example, both Los Angeles and New York City have two clubs that were formed at different points in time. However, the growth per year for the clubs that were around the longest (LA Galaxy and NY Redbull), were 1.4x and 3x greater than those that haven’t been around as long (Los Angeles FC and New York City FC). A huge difference.

I could go on, but for the sake of time and attention spans, I’ll stop here with a few quick notes. One, I did not analyze NWSL and cities for a women’s league because the data is not available to see the values of clubs over time. In my opinion, it would’ve been much better to train the machine-learning model on USL Championship (2nd tier USA) club value data, but the data is not available.

Again, I’d highly recommend you check out the data visualization I did on this topic. The image above works, as well as this link.

Lastly, if you're interested in reading my thesis in its entirety, please don’t hesitate to reach out. I’d love to share, discuss, and talk about what the future holds for Canadian soccer.

Thank you et merci.