The historic run of Canada Soccer’s Men’s National Team at the FIFA World Cup came to an end on Saturday afternoon, but it drew a record-breaking crowd of Canadian television viewers, according to Bell Media on Monday.
An average of 5.4 million viewers tuned in to watch Canada take on Morocco in the round of 16, across TSN, CTV, RDS, Noovo and Crave, according to early numbers from Numeris. That makes it the most-watched Canadian game in FIFA World Cup history, and the biggest non-Final World Cup broadcast Canada has ever seen.
Viewership peaked at 2:41 p.m. ET, when 7.3 million people were watching at the same time as Canada chased an equalizer. It wasn’t meant to be, as Morocco stepped it up a notch and overwhelmed Canada, winning 3-0.
Over the course of the afternoon, 11.7 million unique Canadian viewers caught at least part of the historic broadcast. Streaming was way up too, jumping more than 500% compared to Canada’s Round of 16 opener in 2022.
Bell says 28.2 million unique viewers, or roughly 69% of the Canadian population, have now watched some part of the 2026 tournament so far. Canadians have racked up over 274 million hours of live match viewing, up 150% from the same point in the 2022 tournament.
Live World Cup coverage continues through the rest of the knockout stages, with the final taking place on Sunday, July 19.
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