Why the 2026 soccer buzz will tell us who Canadian iGamers really trust

A new YouGov study commissioned by Tonybet finds Canadian players approaching the big soccer tournament with clear priorities and an unusually open mind about which operators will earn their custom.

Few Canadian summers have arrived with as much riding on them, commercially, as the one ahead. With Alberta joining Ontario as a regulated private market and the biggest soccer tournament in the world having landed in June, the country’s online betting operators face the most consequential acquisition window since the market began opening in 2022. The shape of that opportunity is now beginning to come into focus.

The research of YouGov Canada, commissioned by Tonybet, finds that eight in ten Canadian iGamers plan to wager on the tournament (83 per cent), and almost six in ten (59 per cent) say they would consider trying a new betting platform to do so. Read side by side, the two figures describe a population about to engage seriously with the sport while remaining genuinely open about where they engage*.

That openness is unusual at this stage of a market’s development. In older jurisdictions – Britain, Australia, much of continental Europe – operator loyalty tends to harden by the second decade, and tournaments amplify those existing relationships. Canada is younger, more recently liberalised, and has not yet settled into the comfortable habits that protect incumbents elsewhere. The headlines until now have been about supply: provincial openings, regulatory arrivals, the slow extension of legal sportsbooks. The next move, on the evidence of this study, belongs to the players themselves.

What they want is also clearer than the industry’s marketing has tended to assume. Nationally, the same three factors lead the list of reasons Canadian bettors give for choosing one platform over another: promotions (15 per cent), bonuses (10 per cent), and the speed with which winnings can be withdrawn (10 per cent). These are working preferences. They reflect the small daily judgements a bettor makes about whether an app is worth the time, whether a payout will arrive on schedule, whether the next bet is easier to place here or somewhere else. A tournament intensifies all three*.

Tonybet

Tonybet’s CEO, Dmitry Arabuli, frames the moment in those terms.

“Canadian players are telling us very clearly what they value,” he said. “A platform that respects their time, pays out quickly, and works the first time they open the app. The companies that listen to that, and build for it, will be the ones who earn long-term loyalty.”

The financial weight behind these intentions is considerable. More than half of those planning to bet on the tournament (57 per cent) expect to spend over $300 across the competition, with sizeable minorities planning a great deal more – 31 per cent expect to spend at least $500, and almost one in ten (9 per cent) over $1,000. Tournament betting in Canada has become a serious economic activity, not a seasonal flourish to a casino-led market*.

For Tonybet specifically, one finding stands a little apart. Among existing Canadian users, the most common reason given for choosing the platform is its user experience (22 per cent) – ahead of promotions and new-user offers (21 per cent), brand trust (15 per cent), and every other factor the survey tested. In Quebec, the province where Tonybet’s brand opinion currently outpaces the national average, a third of those aware of the operator (33 per cent) rate it five out of five*.

Together they describe an operator whose product is doing what it needs to, at the moment Canadian iGamers are most willing to look around.

“What this research confirms is what our own user data has been telling us for some time,” Dmitry Arabuli said. “When Canadians try our platform, they tend to stay. Our task now is to make that experience even better – faster, smoother, more reliable – and to keep investing in the things Canadian players have told us they care about. We’re doing that within the regulatory frameworks of every province we operate in, and with responsible gambling tools built into the platform from the start. Growing in Canada the right way matters more to us than growing quickly.”

That commitment now meets its largest opportunity. The tournament looks set to bring a great many more to that point.

<sub>*YouGov Canada total sample size was 1719 Canadian iGamer adults, with a margin of error of
+ 2.4%. iGamers were defined as ‘those who participate in online sports or casino betting more than once a month. Fieldwork was undertaken between March 12th – 29th 2026. The survey was conducted online with oversampling in Alberta, Ontario and Quebec. The results have been weighted and are representative of the national iGamers population aged 22-54. Survey carried out by YouGov Plc</sub>