As Canada prepares to co-host the 2026 FIFA World Cup, Bank of Montreal (BMO), the country’s long-time supporter of grassroots soccer, recognised a pressing challenge: despite the scale and passion within youth football, deeper fan engagement and meaningful community relationships were lacking. Engagement at the community level remained fragmented and analogue. Players, and their friends, families, and fans relied on disparate platforms, while sponsors like BMO had few digital touchpoints to connect meaningfully with local audiences. BMO saw an opportunity not just to support the game financially, but to lead its digital transformation—creating a legacy far beyond 2026.

In 2025, BMO partnered with Ontario Soccer and Sportswik to launch Ontario Soccer’s MySoccer Powered by BMO — a mobile-first, white-label platform designed to unify and engage the communities in and around Ontario’s 500+ clubs. The App, which serves as the digital home of Ontario Soccer’s GeneratiON26 campaign, enables real-time, user-generated content from grassroots matches and functions as a centralised hub for community updates, digital engagement and sponsor activations.

(Pilot Phase)

• BMO tapped into a portion of the 44 million page impressions generated during the pilot phase, enabling meaningful, early engagement with grassroots audiences.

• BMO activated multiple contextual and targeted digital formats to engage administrators, coaches, players, families, friends and fans.

• BMO’s support enabled Ontario Soccer to onboard 17,164 users, cover 2,441 games and average 224 attendees per match during the short 2025 pilot phase.

• The partnership has laid the foundation for Ontario Soccer’s MySoccer App Powered by BMO rollout across the province, reduced or even eliminated paper-based match protocols and positioned BMO as a catalyst for the digital transformation of soccer in Ontario.