For a relatively small nation, Canada often punches above its weight in sports. We continue to dominate in hockey, while our national men’s and women’s basketball and soccer teams have never looked better. Canada even produces a handful of baseball and football players.
But what does the future hold for Canadian sports? Will we ever see a World Cup soccer triumph, or an Olympic Gold in basketball? Or can a Canadian QB ever hoist the Lombardi trophy? Or will all sports one day be mashed up into one dystopian spectacle? Let's assume things don't go all Rollerball just yet.
Complex Canada is taking a look into the future to see how Canadian sports will dominate in the year 3000.
Hockey Keeps Going Global
Canada still produces the most hockey players in the world, and Canadians are still passionate about their teams, but over time, that stranglehold on the sport may start to slip. American stars of today like Jack Hughes and Auston Matthews will only fuel more fandom for the sport down south, while eventual European expansion will mean NHL players can stay in Stockholm or Helsinki instead of coming stateside if they so choose.
How will Canadians continue to compete in this global environment? A revitalization of infrastructure will be a good start, with Canada taking advantage of its colder climate to build the most advanced facilities and analytics trackers in the world. That will attract a new generation of players to the sport at home, and the best from elsewhere.
The most pressing question on the minds of Canadian hockey fans when talking about the future is when will a Canadian team finally raise the Stanley Cup? It hasn’t happened since Montreal in 1993. The answer? We’re only partially kidding when we suggest finding a way to clone Connor McDavid.
Canada Sets Trends in Basketball
We’re in a golden era of Canadian basketball. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is one of the best players in the world, Jamal Murray and Andrew Wiggins are champions, while Bennedict Mathurin and more seem primed to break out.
The good times will continue, eventually culminating in Olympic Gold for both the men’s and women’s national teams. Basketball won’t stop growing in Canada. New courts will sprout up in countless communities, the NBA could potentially give Vancouver a second look for a franchise, or Montreal with a number of homegrown stars to help sell tickets. It’s not hard to envision basketball eventually taking over as the dominant sport in this country, especially as the cost of entry to play hockey keeps rising.
More importantly, Canadians will play an increased role in pushing trends in basketball, both on and off the court. New moves, new looks, new sneaker designs will come from our unique Canadian lens. It seems inevitable that Canadian basketball will one day produce a game changer like Drake did for music—someone who just seems to dominate on and off the court for over a decade, and everyone will have a firm opinion on every move they make.
Canada Takes Another Step Forward in Soccer
Canada will play host to World Cup games in 2026 alongside the United States and Mexico. Led by Alphonso Davies, Canada’s national men’s soccer team will achieve its best result on the international stage. Maybe not on par with the women’s team, but close enough.
Either way, that’s the spark this country will need to truly become a soccer powerhouse. As our major urban areas continue to warm, synthetic soccer fields will become an even more frequent site. Instead of a handful of Canadians hitting the European leagues every year, we’ll soon see way more.
Canadian players will adorn video game box art and billboards in unexpected places. Of all the sports, soccer seems the one most likely to find itself in space, just because so many people play it. So we’ll say when they build the first pitches on the moon and Mars, Canadians will be present for that major moment. And so will a Messi hologram.
Canada Embraces Football and Tech
Canadians love football, and that love is only going to grow. In the shorter term, yes, Canada will finally get an NFL team. Based on where the league is headed, probably after a few European hotspots and even Mexico, but there’s too much demand and too much money to say no.
There’s a lot of technology baked into modern football, from tablets to headsets. Because of that, football in the future is probably going to look pretty different, with play lines on the field that only fans can see, real-time stats floating over the heads of the players, artifical intelligence playcalling, and illuminating lines that automatically tell you if a player made first down or not. None of that will be unique to Canadians, but Canada is a dominant nation in gaming, and football seems most primed to look like a real-life one in a few decades (or centuries).
Another way technology will help football is on the health side. As we learn more and more about the devastating effects of concussions, new tech will be designed to protect the players, like invisible padding to an assortment of tools to instantly repair injuries on the field. So that way, if a new Canadian star emerges in the league, they’ll be able to have a long, successful career.
