Why Canadian universities are cutting sports in a race to fix fragile funding models

Alicia Gilmour’s final season with McGill University women’s rugby didn’t feel like a season at all.

It felt like a countdown.

As games began late last summer, resources were stripped away: Practice time with coaches was reduced, and there were none of the usual support services such as strength training and conditioning.

“We were told that McGill was planning on making cuts,” the third-year athlete and political science student said during a recent interview. The team needed to win half of its games or face the chopping block.

“It was really difficult to reach our full potential when McGill was already slashing what we needed in order to reach that.”

The team – never much of a threat against the powerhouses of Quebec’s RSEQ conference, such as Laval or the University of Ottawa – lost its first five before pulling off a single win in the final match of the season.

Weeks later, Ms. Gilmour would learn that was the end: not only of her university athletics career but of a 48-year history of women’s rugby at McGill.

On Nov. 20, McGill announced it was slashing more than 50 per cent of its athletic programming – 25 varsity or competitive club teams across 15 sports – as of the 2026-27 season. Among the other casualties: golf, tennis, squash, fencing, figure skating, Nordic ski, men’s baseball, women’s field hockey, and the 125-year-old track-and-field program.

Nineteen programs were spared, including basketball, swimming, hockey, rowing, cross-country running, men’s rugby, men’s football and women’s volleyball.

McGill said it had reached the decision based on an internal 2024 audit and a 2025 external review by the consulting firm KPMG, citing “ongoing challenges related to facility space, budget constraints, and human resources capacity.” The university did not make either of those reviews public, nor did it announce how much money it expected to save.

The backlash came swiftly and loudly: from students, alumni, Olympians, national sport organizations, community members and others.

In an interview, sprinter Bruny Surin said he had just been on a panel at the annual congress of Athlétisme Québec, talking about the need to develop track programs at the province’s universities. “Then I read about McGill, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, we’re going backwards.’”

A petition to reinstate the track-and-field team drew more than 11,000 signatures. But the university is holding firm.

In fact, McGill’s move is being received in some corners as a likely harbinger of more cuts to come across the country, raising urgent questions about the fragility of postsecondary sport in Canada and the role it plays in the wider high-performance sport ecosystem.

From coast to coast, universities and colleges facing seven- and eight-figure budget shortfalls are beginning to eye their athletic and recreation departments for savings. Student-athletes are bracing for impact.

“I think the McGill cuts really have paved the way for other universities to look and say, ‘Well, if McGill is cutting teams, should we be looking at this? Why aren’t we looking at this?’” said Bob Copeland, the senior vice-president at industry consultancy McLaren Global Sport Solutions.

Days after McGill’s bombshell, Bishop’s University in Sherbrooke announced its Gaiters football team would leave the Atlantic University Sport conference after eight seasons and would return to Quebec’s RSEQ. A Bishop’s press release cited “significant sector-wide financial constraints and increasing travel costs that are affecting the sustainability of all programs involved.”

That same week, Simon Fraser University announced it will cut five varsity teams across three sports (golf, outdoor track, softball) as the school leaves the U.S.-based NCAA Division II and applies for membership in the Canada West conference of U Sports, the governing body for national university sport in this country.

Then, earlier this month, the school revealed it was also scrapping its men’s lacrosse team and an exhibition hockey team, both of which compete in the United States. The lacrosse team had won 11 championships – the most of any university, according to a story on the SFU website announcing the decision.

SFU’s moves were prompted by numerous considerations, including rising concerns about students travelling to the U.S. for competitions. But cost is also a factor: An independent report from McLaren noted it will save the Department of Athletics and Recreation more than $1.1-million annually as the school faces an estimated $20-million shortfall this year.

“The financial challenges that are in place now are like nothing we’ve seen previously as a collective for postsecondary in my time,” said Tom Huisman, who spent more than 25 years in the sector, including 15 as director of operations for U Sports, before retiring from his position as director of athletics and recreation at UBC Okanagan last September. “This is something that’s been percolating for a couple of years, but it’s really hitting an inflection point.”

Leaders in the sector say those challenges are the result of several factors colliding at once. The federal government has slashed the rolls of international students, who had been a profitable source of funds. As an example, first-year tuition for the University of Toronto’s arts and sciences program is $6,100 for students from Ontario; it is $63,570 for those from outside of Canada. Government funding hasn’t kept pace with inflation. Infrastructure is aging, and multimillion-dollar maintenance bills are looming.

“The pressures around fundraising are probably more real than they have ever been,” said Pierre Arsenault, the chief executive officer of U Sports. The organization, which is home to 58 member institutions and around 15,000 student-athletes, oversees four conferences across the country – AUS, RSEQ, Ontario University Athletics (OUA) and Canada West.

Mr. Arsenault, who has been leading U Sports since 2022, explained that the makeup of financial support for sports differs at each member institution, but it is typically a combination of central funding from the university, self-generated revenue and fundraising.

Gord Grace, who runs the OUA, U Sports’ largest conference in terms of athletes, teams and sports, said the financial stress is “an everyday thing right now.”

“I heard from one of our members asking me to call them because they think they’re going to have to cut [some] sport because of their financial situation,” he said in a recent interview.

The financial squeeze is a jarring contrast to the collegiate sports landscape in the U.S., where salaries of top coaches regularly exceed US$10-million, students speak of programs awash in cash, and a series of recent court decisions have athletes eyeing enormous paydays. Total revenues for the athletic departments in the NCAA’s Division I hit more than US$20-billion in 2024, according to a report by the league. The NCAA’s March Madness basketball tournament is a TV blockbuster that also serves as a month-long ad for the top-ranked schools. For universities that make it to the men’s Final Four, prize money can be worth millions of dollars.

That is partly a glitzy mirage, though. “Most NCAA sports are money losers,” said McLaren’s Mr. Copeland, noting that Division I football and basketball tend to be the programs that keep all others afloat at U.S. colleges.

And in Canada, even winning can be a losing proposition. “If you have a football team that goes on a national championship run across the country, it could cost you a couple of hundred thousand dollars,” in extra travel and other costs, Mr. Copeland said. Teams are not compensated, and there is no prize money to be won.

Canadian universities could never hope to compete with the U.S. for talent or sponsorship – nor do they try – but they still have to exist in the same sports and entertainment ecosystem, which has become increasingly cluttered and competitive in recent years.

The good news is that corporate sponsorships in Canada have grown from approximately $3-billion before the pandemic to about $4-billion now, noted Norm O’Reilly, the dean of the College of Business at the University of New England in Biddeford, Me., and the lead researcher on an annual survey known as the Canadian Sponsorship Landscape Study.

But that additional money is almost entirely going to newer properties, he said: “Think music, comedy, festivals, women’s sports, e-sports, the arts, municipal sponsorships.” In the past two years alone, four Canadian women’s pro hockey teams and six women’s pro soccer teams were added to the mix. The WNBA’s Toronto Tempo is due to launch this spring.

“Canadian brands are looking for places where they can reach people, particularly young people, which is an enormous opportunity for university sport,” Mr. O’Reilly said. “But right now, those assets are not providing it.”

A few school programs, such as Laval football, draw significant audiences. “But across the board, there’s very little digital content that anyone’s following – beyond girlfriends, boyfriends, moms, dads, grandparents, etc. Maybe a few other students. There’s just not the value there,” for potential sponsors, Mr. O’Reilly said.

The U Sports conferences offer their own paid streaming service – revenues are split among the teams – but that is designed to serve an existing fan base rather than increase it.

The Vanier Cup national football championship – the highest-profile event on the U Sports calendar – used to regularly sell more than 20,000 tickets and pull in 500,000 or more viewers on TV. Those days appear to be gone. Last November’s game at Regina’s Mosaic Stadium, between the University of Saskatchewan Huskies and the University of Montreal Carabins, drew an announced crowd of 8,896, even with tickets priced at $11.12 and $21.47. The broadcast on CBC TV averaged a paltry 68,000 viewers.

During the regular U Sports season, it’s not unusual for fans to throng for an orientation week game or Homecoming, but packed stands are the exception.

When asked if he could alter one thing about university sport in Canada, Mr. Arsenault immediately answered attendance.

“If we could change just how full the rinks are, how full the stadiums are, how full the gyms are, the pools, the tracks to watch our student athletes, the world wouldn’t be disappointed in our communities,” he said.

In the face of increasing instability, schools across U Sports have quietly looked to alternative models for funding and operations. Often, that means players footing the bill themselves. Mr. Huisman noted that in 2019, UBC Okanagan greenlit a women’s softball team whose six-figure budget was raised almost entirely from the players and the community. Last October, the team won its second national championship in five years.

And in December, UBCO added men’s and women’s curling with a similar self-funded model, supported by a partnership with the Kelowna Curling Club.

McGill’s cuts included several self-funded club teams, such as squash, Nordic skiing, men’s volleyball and women’s lacrosse. The Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) has offered all of those clubs, along with the others that were cut, an opportunity to continue as self-funded operations affiliated with the SSMU rather than McGill Athletics and Recreation. But the self-funded model is not a silver bullet for university athletics’ financial struggles, oftentimes adding high administrative costs.

“To manage a self-funded sport for an athletic department takes more time than a funded program,” said OUA’s Mr. Grace.

In an interview, Dilson Rassier, the provost of SFU, said the university was not considering allowing any of the sports it was cutting to continue with a self-funded model, despite suggestions that some teams might pursue that route. “Right now, we want to make sure that we support the sports that we have, the teams that we have – and then, in the future, who knows?”

Partnerships with national sport organizations (NSOs) could be another lifeline.

Days after McGill’s announcement, two NSOs warned the cuts could damage Canada’s high-performance sport pipeline.

Athletics Canada said the move “affects all Canadian track and field, athlete development, and access to top-level competition and training facilities in Quebec, and across the country.”

Nordiq Canada’s CEO Beckie Scott said in a statement that “the pathway from grassroots participation to high-performance success relies on strong school and university programs.”

That’s not always the case: Many of Canada’s most famous pro athletes cut their teeth in the U.S.’s NCAA system rather than U Sports, particularly players in the NHL, PWHL and NBA. But Canadian universities are important sources of talent for a handful of other high-performance sports. About 30 per cent of last year’s opening day Canadian Football League rosters comprised former U Sports players. And 29 of the 32 players on the Canadian team that placed second at last year’s Rugby World Cup were U Sports alumni.

Still, Canada’s NSOs have their own well-documented financial challenges after two decades of no significant government funding increases.

Mr. Copeland of McLaren Global Sport Solutions suggested that if universities “are that important to NSOs and to the sport ecosystem in Canada, then we need to look at how NSOs – and frankly Sport Canada – support universities in Canada.”

He acknowledged that the crisis is unfolding against a backdrop of unprecedented government funding for professional sport, with more than $1-billion being spent to support Vancouver and Toronto hosting 13 FIFA World Cup matches this summer.

“That shows you there is money out there,” he said. “It’s a political calculus as well.”

The 2025 to 2029 U Sports strategic plan focuses on growth and sustainability, which includes commitments to more partnerships, greater integration with national sport and improving its national championships.

When universities decide that sport is not worth sustaining, Vicki Squires says entire communities pay the price in unexpected ways. She pointed to a connection between sports teams and belonging on campus, equity, alumni relations and training the next generation of physiotherapists.

Dr. Squires’s research focuses on postsecondary student well-being and success, health promotion and educational administration. She currently serves as an associate dean at the University of Saskatchewan.

“Trying to unpack one solution for financial challenges without thinking about the impact more broadly is sometimes pretty short-sighted,” she said.

She also noted it’s important to consider the potential implications for how Canadians view academic institutions. Removing sports weakens the connection between campuses and their communities, especially because there are many shared facilities and community engagement programming from athletes, she explained.

“You can build a story around your team, [going] beyond the scope of your local community and go national in terms of building reputation,” Dr. Squires said. She added that sport can also keep alumni communities engaged and bring in donor dollars.

Mr. Arsenault also noted the community aspect of university sport. “Once you live the emotions of what sport can do for a community … there is lots of belief and celebration for the need and for the opportunity that comes with sport,” he said.

Both Mr. Arsenault and Mr. Grace believe in the value of a distinctly Canadian model of university sport.

“We are offering a much more balanced opportunity, much more balanced experience,” said Mr. Grace, highlighting the emphasis on athletes’ studies and graduation.

Mr. Arsenault said he believes the U Sports model focuses on authenticity and stability, especially in contrast with what he calls the “transience” of the NCAA system.

“We’ll get through it, as will our universities,” said Mr. Grace. “We’re not going anywhere.”

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