As the FIFA World Cup hits the halfway mark, the federal government is focusing on making sure the next generation of players can still take the field.

Those in the youth sports space say the hardest part of getting Canadian kids into soccer isn’t convincing them to watch the World Cup — it’s making sure they can afford to play after the tournament ends. 

That’s the challenge the federal government says it’s trying to address with a new program to build 25 community soccer pitches across Canada over the next four years. 

Just this week, Secretary of State for Sport Adam van Koeverden announced a community soccer pitch in Surrey B.C.

“We want sports to be available for everyone who wants to play, because we know that talent is everywhere across our country but we want opportunities to be right across our country as well,” van Koeverden said in an interview with iPolitics.  

The pitches are intended to remove barriers to participation by offering free access and equipment-sharing stations where children can borrow soccer balls through an app, van Koeverden said. 

When asked what success from the program would look like, van Koeverden said “joy on kids’ faces” and the inspiration “given to the next generation” is one of the ways to measure success.

The project is being launched with Canadian Tire Jumpstart Charities, a national charity that helps children overcome financial and accessibility barriers to sport and recreation. 

Jumpstart President Marco Di Buono said major sporting events create an “inspiration effect” that encourages children to try a new sport, but that excitement only lasts if families have affordable places to play. 

“The key is to capitalize on that inspiration effect by making sure that access to those sports are sustainable over the long term,” Di Buono said in an interview with iPolitics. 

But converting that excitement into long-term participation remains one of Canada’s biggest challenges. In its report released this spring, the Future of Sport in Canada Commission concluded that financial barriers remain among the country’s biggest obstacles to participation, warning that rising costs are making organized sport increasingly exclusive. 

“The number one barrier to sport participation, no matter where you are in the world, quite honestly is cost,” Di Buono said.

Because of COVID restrictions, Canadian youth sport participation dropped by 14 percentage points between 2018 and 2020, according to Statistics Canada. While the numbers largely recovered since then, Di Buono pointed to rising inflation in the past years that has made participation less affordable for an average Canadian family. 

“We know from our parents that this is becoming a problem,” he said. 

The average cost to participate in sport per child is about $3,000, according to the State of Youth Sport Report. The cost includes registration fees, transportation, equipment, and apparel. 

While some sports are less expensive than others, Di Buono said parents are finding it increasingly difficult to “prioritize” sport over essential household expenditures. 

For Di Buono, the concern extends beyond whether children sign up for a sport, it’s whether they stay in it. While events like the FIFA World Cup can inspire young athletes to pick up a soccer ball, he said rising costs risk turning that excitement into a short-lived experience rather than a lifelong habit. 

That growing emphasis on affordability could be reflected in Ottawa’s broader approach to sport policy. 

As part of the Spring Economic Update, the federal government pledged a five-year investment of $755 million in Canada’s sport system, with $118 million annually after under its ‘playground to podium” program. The funding is intended to strengthen grassroots participation, support national sport organizations and high-performance athletes, and help communities capitalize on major sporting events. 

Di Buono said the strategy marks a shift from Canada’s previous emphasis on high-performance sport. In the lead-up to the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, he said governments focused much of their investment on helping Canadian athletes win medals through the Own the Podium program, an initiative launched after Canada failed to win an Olympic gold medal on home soil. 

While the program largely succeeded, Di Buono said the focus on elite sport came at the expense of growing participation on the grassroots level. 

“It’s not that we ignored the need to get as many people to participate as possible, the resources to do it were ignited and it was really a question of what were seen as competing priorities at the time,” he said. 

Today, he said, policymakers increasingly recognize that grassroots participation and elite sport are not competing goals, but part of the same pipeline. 

“We need to think about the continuum from playground to podium if we really want the ecosystem in Canada to thrive to its full capability,” he added.