Canadians love sports, but do they love sports betting? A new study from Leger suggested they may be less keen than they were last year, and also less enthusiastic than Americans.
Leger held an online survey of 1,621 Canadians and 1,015 Americans aged 18 and older from Aug. 29 to 31 and published the results in a September 2025 report.
Asked whether they had gambled on a range of sports over the preceding 12 months, 19% of Canadian adults, extrapolated to roughly equate to 5.9 million people, reported they had. That was down from 21% (6.6 million) from the year before. In comparison, the survey’s findings suggested that 26% of the American adults, equating to 68.4 million people, bet on sports during the same period. That was also a decline, from 30% in 2024.
Those Canadians who bet in fall 2024 and intended to do so again in fall 2025 expected their betting activity/spend to increase compared to last year.
Canadians more averse to betting ads, live odds
Meanwhile, as the debate over sports betting adverts in Canada rumbles on in Parliament, mainstream media and academic studies, Leger found Canadians are significantly more averse to seeing adverts on their screens than Americans.
Overall, six in 10 Canadians (59%) reported they had seen sports betting adverts recently, while 54% of Americans said the same.
Three-quarters (75%) of the Canadians who reported seeing betting ads said that there are too many of them, up from 72% last year. Another 23% said they are fine with the amount of betting advertising they see, while 3% said they would like to see more. In comparison, 59% of the American cohort think betting ads are too common, while 36% are happy with the current level.
The discontent did rise in the U.S., as the proportion of American respondents who believe there are too many ads rose from 52% to 59%.
Image: Leger
Canadians are also more opposed to sports media companies partnering with sportsbooks than Americans are. More than half (51%) of Canadians who bet on sports in the last year either strongly or somewhat agreed that sports platforms should not have deals with betting companies, compared to 30% of Americans.
Almost half (49%) of sports bettors in both countries said that seeing real-time odds on their screens during sports broadcasts is likely to make them bet on the game more, and 48% of Canadians also voiced concerns over match-fixing.
Canadians less au fait with live betting, fantasy
As well as proportionally wagering on sports less than their American counterparts, and disliking betting advertising more, Leger found that Canadian sports bettors are less up to speed on fantasy sports and some more niche methods of wagering.
Nearly one-fifth of the Americans who bet on sports in the last year also participated in some form of fantasy sports (18%), compared to 14% of Canadian sports bettors. In both countries, the proportion declined from 2024.
In addition, American bettors are more likely than Canadian bettors to engage in what the Leger report called “alternative betting types,” including in-play betting, micro betting, peer-to-peer exchange betting and eSports betting.
While four in 10 American bettors (39%) placed in-play bets in the past year, only 22% of Canadian bettors did so. Just 15% of Canadian sports bettors reported they had placed micro bets, typically defined as wagers on an individual event in a sporting event, and the same proportion wagered on exchange betting and esports. In contrast, 24% of American bettors placed micro bets, 26% gambled on exchange betting and 22% wagered on esports.
Image: Leger
When it comes to what Canadians do like to bet on, Leger said the NHL is king, with 41% of sports bettors in Canada putting down bucks on the puck. That’s down slightly from 45% in 2024 but is still far ahead of the U.S., where the NHL betting rate was 20%.
South of the border, the NFL gets the crown, with six in 10 bettors (59%) wagering on pro football. That proportion is less than half in Canada, at 26%, a number that was down significantly from 37% last year. Betting on the NBA was up slightly in Canada year over year, from 16% to 21%, but the number of Canadians who wagered on MLB was down from 21% to 18%. In stark contrast, MLB betting jumped from 28% to 40% in the U.S. over the last year.
