Canada’s influence on global sports technology is increasingly visible far beyond hockey rinks and domestic leagues. From Montreal’s artificial intelligence laboratories to Toronto startups developing new ways to experience live games, Canadian companies are building technologies now used by professional teams, leagues and sports organizations around the world.
The opportunity is significant. The global sports technology market was valued at roughly US$19 billion in 2024 and has been expanding at around 20% annually. Canada represents approximately US$450 million of that market, according to RBC, with annual growth close to 19%.
More important than market size, however, is where Canadian startups are competing. They are moving into some of the most valuable areas of modern sport: artificial intelligence, performance analytics, fan data and next-generation broadcasting.
Artificial intelligence is changing how teams understand the game
Montreal-based Sportlogiq offers one of the clearest examples of Canadian sports technology reaching an international market.
Founded by former Canadian Olympic figure skater Craig Buntin and computer vision specialist Mehrsan Javan, the company uses computer vision and machine learning to extract data from sports video. Its hockey platform can generate more than 300 advanced metrics and connects those data points directly to video.
Sportlogiq says its technology is used by the majority of NHL teams and more than 150 professional and amateur hockey organizations worldwide. Its coverage extends across as many as 26 hockey leagues, while the company has also moved into soccer and football analytics.
What began as a solution rooted in hockey has therefore developed into an exportable AI product. Coaches can analyze matchups, scouts can compare players and organizations can study performance without depending exclusively on manual video analysis.
Toronto startups are rethinking sports broadcasting
Another Canadian company is attacking a different part of the sports business.
Toronto-based Peripheral Labs is developing spatial-intelligence technology capable of reconstructing sporting events in photorealistic 3D. In January 2026, it was selected for the NBA Launchpad program, where emerging technology companies work directly with the NBA and WNBA.
The concept could change what a sports broadcast looks like. Instead of watching only the camera angle selected by a television director, volumetric reconstruction can eventually allow viewers to examine plays from different perspectives.
The same technology can produce player and ball tracking information, creating a bridge between broadcasting and performance analytics.
For a relatively young Canadian company, gaining access to NBA environments provides something especially valuable: a testing ground inside one of the world’s most sophisticated sports businesses.
The battle for sports fans is becoming a battle for data
The transformation extends beyond what happens during games.
Calgary-based StellarAlgo has built its business around helping sports organizations understand the people watching them. Its platform combines information from ticketing, merchandise, marketing systems and other sources to create detailed fan profiles and identify potential commercial opportunities.
The company says it works with more than 230 teams, leagues and sports organizations and processes data associated with approximately 200 million fans worldwide.
This addresses a fundamental problem for professional sports. A person may watch games, buy merchandise and interact constantly with a team online without ever purchasing a ticket. Traditional ticketing databases capture only part of that relationship.
Artificial intelligence increasingly allows teams to predict which fans may buy tickets, renew season packages or disengage. For franchises, better fan data can influence marketing, sponsorship and revenue strategy.
Canadian consumers are already moving in this direction. An IBM-commissioned survey released in August 2026 found that 68% of Canadian sports fans surveyed saw value in AI-powered sports features, while 54% wanted faster event recaps.
Canada is building an ecosystem around sports innovation
Individual companies are only part of the story. Canada has gradually developed infrastructure designed specifically to connect sports organizations, universities, entrepreneurs and investors.
Toronto Metropolitan University’s Future of Sport Lab, created with Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, grew from an initiative launched in 2015 and describes itself as North America’s first industry-facing sports technology incubator. Startups associated with the program have raised more than $150 million in financing and investment.
Government support is also increasing. In June 2026, FedDev Ontario announced funding aimed partly at helping Canadian sports-tech businesses scale and pursue international opportunities.
Canada still represents a relatively small portion of the global sports technology business, and access to growth capital remains a challenge compared with larger markets. But its startups are increasingly solving problems that every major sports organization faces: understanding athletes more precisely, producing richer broadcasts and building direct relationships with fans.
That combination gives Canadian sports technology a market much larger than Canada itself.
