The Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) and Canadian Paralympic Committee (CPC) say the time is now for the federal government to start reinvesting some of the revenue it makes from sports betting into sports, which they say is greatly underfunded.
COC CEO David Shoemaker and his counterpart on the CPC, Karen O’Neill, authored a budget proposal that called on Mark Carney’s government to put money raised from sports gambling into high-performance athletics programs.
In the proposal, submitted in late August, the committee heads noted that a Deloitte analysis found that the country’s 62 federally funded National Sport Organizations (NSOs) need $144 million in extra investment to be able to stabilize their operations and deliver essential support to athletes and communities nationwide. Many NSOs reportedly received signals that their funding would be cut by as much as 30% in 2026.
That gap, they believe, can be closed in part by money from sports wagering.
Profit breeds opportunity
Since Canada legalized single-event sports betting in 2021, said Shoemaker and O’Neill, the federal government has reaped tens of millions of dollars in extra revenue from wagering. Their budget proposal estimated that approximately $65 million in revenue is reaching the federal government from online sports betting, a number which it says is projected to grow to $100 million by 2029.
A report from the Future of Sport in Canada Commission into sport funding, published around the same time as the COC and CPC proposal, stated that as far back as 2023, the federal government was already making over $60 million in tax revenue from sport betting in Ontario alone. It noted this figure was projected to grow substantially in the coming years as Ontario’s iGaming market boomed.
Although the commission said it heard a range of opinions about the value and ethics of betting revenue being dedicated to sport, the proposal to do so was suggested numerous times during its consultation process.
“A promising opportunity exists to achieve cost neutrality through this new revenue stream,” added the COC and budget proposal. Shoemaker and O’Neill suggested that a coordinated partnership between the federal government and the provinces could help to ensure that revenue translates directly to national benefit, expanded NSO capacity and amplified community-level returns across the nationwide Canadian economy.
“It’s sensible to me that single-sport betting is in effect a microeconomy built on the product that is sport in this country,” Shoemaker told CBC. “And then it’s sensible to take the proceeds or the federal tax proceeds from that and invest it.”
Canadian Gaming Business reached out to multiple government ministries for this story but did not receive any insights.
2026 Budget keeps sports funding status quo
For now, at least, the call appears to have fallen on deaf ears. Tuesday’s federal budget announcement, the first by Prime Minister Mark Carney’s administration, did not allocate new sources of funding to NSOs.
Twenty years have passed since the last time core federal funding for NSOs was increased, although the 2024 budget did propose two-year investments totalling $41 million toward the Sport Support Program, the Future of Sport in Canada Commission and community sport programming. Even that was less than half the $104 million requested at the time by the COC.
The Future of Sport in Canada Commission also noted in its August report examples from other countries of a large chunk of gambling revenue being directed to sports funding. Data provided to Canadian Gaming Business by the COC suggests that Canada invests 0.082% of its federal budget on sport (equating to 0.011% of its GDP). In current dollars on a per-capita basis, this translates to spending $8 per capita on sport, compared to France’s $950, Italy’s $130 and the United Kingdom’s $25.
“As the government prioritizes results over spending, the legalization of single-sport betting in Canada provides a timely cost-neutral solution to reinvest in Canadian sport,” concluded the COC and CPC proposal. “With 83% of Canadians supporting the reinvestment of these funds into sport, the public mandate is clear.”
The COC said in a statement issued Wednesday in response to Tuesday’s Budget proposal that it will continue to advocate for federal investment in NSO core funding as part of a plan to transform the Canadian sport system.
