Using Movement Data to grow the game across Canada

Tennis Canada’s Facilities Development Team has a straightforward but ambitious mandate: make tennis accessible to more Canadians, in more places, all year round. They do this through three core programs:

• The National Bank Play Your Court Program, which provides funding support for the refurbishment of publicly accessible municipal courts;
• The Year-Round Community Tennis Courts Program Presented by Rogers, which provides funding support to create more year-round courts (or domes) that can be used during Canada’s long winters; and
• The development of larger provincial/territorial and regional tennis facilities that give high-performance athletes somewhere to train at home.

Many of Canada’s public tennis courts are unstaffed, free to use, and operate on a first come, first served basis, which means there are no membership records, no booking logs, and essentially no data on how many people actually use the courts. For a national sport organization trying to make the case for investment in specific communities – to municipalities, program sponsors and other commercial partners – the absence of reliable usage data is a serious obstacle.

“With the membership programs and booking systems that club facilities have in place, we collect demographic and usage data to assist in our evaluation of where we need to improve our facilities. Without a system in place at public parks, it’s difficult to collect concrete data beyond who has access to the facility. With the data collected from ActiveXchange, we can gather the information we need to improve access to public tennis facilities.”

Katie Matthews, Community Projects Coordinator, Tennis Canada​

Tennis Canada began its partnership with ActiveXchange just over a year ago. Since then, CAN Active MOVEMENT has become central to how the Facilities Development Team identifies where investment is needed, builds the case for it, tracks whether it worked, and shares proof of impact with program sponsors and government funders.

How Tennis Canada Uses Movement Data

Tennis Canada now tracks over 80 locations across Canada through CAN Active Insights, from major urban parks drawing over 100,000 visits a year to smaller community facilities in towns with only one or two courts. The data gives the team ongoing access to user data, movement trends and gaps.

1. Building community profiles

The starting point for any outreach effort is understanding how a facility is currently being used. Through Visit Reports, Tennis Canada can build a detailed profile of any tracked court: how many people visit and how often, what days and times see the most activity, how long people stay, where they’re travelling from, and what the demographic makeup of the visitor base looks like.

Morris Kerbel Park in Brampton, Ontario illustrates how this translates into action. With an average dwell time of 57 minutes, visitors are staying to play. The data shows peak activity on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, with Sunday the quietest day. Usage is heavily weekday-skewed at 73.6% of visits, with a consistent dip between 1pm and 3pm.

The midday gap during school hours, combined with the court’s location in a dense suburban municipality, pointed to a clear opportunity for a nearby school to bring students for tennis programming during that underused window.

The visitor segment data reveals just how broad that community is – spanning newly arrived immigrant families, established affluent households, long-settled multicultural communities, and rural workers on the urban fringe. Tennis at Morris Kerbel Park is serving many communities and that has direct implications for how Tennis Canada and its provincial partners design programs and plan outreach.

“Looking at this profile, we can see that Sundays are very low use. There could be an opportunity for the Ontario Tennis Association to come and hold tournaments om Morris Kerbel Park on Sundays. Thursdays and Fridays are also fairly low use. Given the opening during school hours, this would be a great time for a nearby school to bring their students to the courts to participate in introductory tennis programs.”

Katie Matthews, Community Projects Coordinator, Tennis Canada​

This kind of community profile-driven thinking is now applied systematically across Tennis Canada’s tracked facilities, helping the team and their provincial partners identify programming opportunities they would otherwise have missed entirely.

2. Identifying tennis dead zones

One of Tennis Canada’s most pressing strategic challenges is what the team calls “dead zones” – areas where demand for tennis exists but courts are scarce, inadequate or non-existent. Identifying them without data has historically meant relying on word of mouth from provincial associations. Movement data makes them visible.

The key metric is travel distance. Tennis Canada uses 50km as a benchmark, so if a significant proportion of visitors to a facility are travelling more than 50km to reach it, that’s a signal that something is missing closer to home.

Watson Glen Park in Chilliwack, British Columbia recorded 20,700 visits between January 2023 and February 2026, but what stands out most is where those visitors are coming from. The movement origin data shows that 31% of all visitors travelled from Hope, a small municipality just over 50km away. The weighted average travel distance for visitors was 67.1km.

When Tennis Canada investigated, the picture became clear. Hope has only two municipal courts. The municipalities between Hope and Chilliwack similarly have only single or double courts which is not enough infrastructure to support programs, clinics or club play. People who want more than an occasional hit have no choice but to travel.

The visitor segment data adds a human dimension to those numbers. The dominant profiles (Country & Western, Scenic Retirement, Backcountry Boomers) paint a picture of older, active residents for whom tennis is a meaningful part of staying healthy and connected, but they’re having to travel a significant distance to play.

“This is a great example of something we could bring to the municipality of Hope to show them that their residents – and specifically their older residents – could benefit from a new bank of courts to allow for tennis programs and tournaments. This would give their senior residents the opportunity to stay active and connected to their community without having to travel 50+ kilometres to do so.”

Katie Matthews, Community Projects Coordinator, Tennis Canada​

3. Tracking the impact of investment

Making the case for investment is important, but proving the investment has paid off and made an impact is just as important, both for building trust with municipalities and for demonstrating return on investment to program sponsors.

Stanley Park’s tennis courts (Vancouver) were selected for refurbishment in 2023 as part of the National Bank Play Your Court Program. All six courts were resurfaced and upgraded with new posts, nets, fencing, and signage, with a grand opening ceremony on June 29, 2023, timed to coincide with the National Bank Stanley Park Open.

In the months following the reopening, the courts steadily built momentum. By summer 2025, visits were peaking at over 13,000 in a single month.

The visitor origin data tells a striking story about the facility’s reach. Almost half of all visitors  (47.54%) come from within 50km, reflecting strong local community use. But nearly the same proportion (49.74%) are travelling more than 150km to get there. This proves the courts are serving more than the local neighbourhood – they’re drawing players from across the region and beyond which is a direct reflection of the tournament’s pull and the quality of the upgraded facility.

“Having concrete data like this is extremely beneficial when advocating for facility development, but is also important for our program sponsors to see. Visible proof that our joint initiatives are doing what they’re intended to do strengthens our partnership with them and further instills their trust in us and the programs they sponsor.”

Katie Matthews, Community Projects Coordinator, Tennis Canada​

4. Keeping courts active all year round

Canada’s winters effectively shut down thousands of outdoor tennis courts for a minimum of 6 months of the year. One of Tennis Canada’s core goals is changing that, and movement data is now providing clear evidence of what happens when you do.

PRC Mississauga had a familiar problem: a well-used facility that went quiet every winter. The solution was doming the courts, converting them to year-round use. The movement data shows exactly what that decision delivered.

Unlike outdoor facilities that follow a predictable seasonal arc (i.e. busy summers, quiet winters), PRC Mississauga shows consistent monthly visit counts throughout the year, with no meaningful winter dip. Winter months are in fact among the highest-traffic periods.

Expanding Across the Organization

What started as a tool for the facilities development team has spread across Tennis Canada’s wider development work. As colleagues from other teams were introduced to the platform, they found their own applications.

The Community Tennis Leagues team, which connects players with similarly skilled competitors in their area, now uses visitor segment data to identify locations most likely to have players looking for matchplay partners, to guide the launch of new league locations and target high-traffic courts where marketing for the program will have the most impact.

The Game. Set. Equity. team, which runs accessible tennis programming for self-identifying women and girls, can use community demographic data and census mapping to identify areas of need and opportunity, and to strengthen their review of funding applications from organizations serving underserved communities.

The Rogers First Set team, which aims to inspire youth to try, learn, play and compete in tennis, provides a fun, welcoming, safe and positive environment for youth to discover the sport. Tennis Month in Canada, a celebration of the sport throughout the month of June, encourages communities to host and engage in community events. The data collected from ActiveXchange during Tennis Month can assist Rogers First Set in tracking engagement at public parks across the country, evaluating the program’s direct impact on participation.

Outcomes

In just over a year, movement data has become embedded in how Tennis Canada plans, advocates and reports. The outcomes are tangible across every part of the organization’s work.

“We can approach potential partners with a detailed and data-backed case on why they should focus their already limited budget and capacity on tennis.”

Katie Matthews, Community Projects Coordinator, Tennis Canada​