I don't think watching the Super Bowl means you're interested in football. Most people watch just for the sake of it, it's like a cultural tradition and an excuse to get drunk with friends and watch a bit of football.

But an increase in both the Grey Cup and Super Bowl could be indicative of there being some interest in football.

That's significantly more than the Raptor's Canadian audience last year.

I read somewhere that more than 80% of people in GTA and Hamilton watched the Raptor's Champ win last year. Even if it were to increase and 90% of people in Toronto and Hamilton were to watch the next NBA Final, I doubt it would beat this last weekend's Superbowl Canadian Audience.

Of course the Canadian audience blip up with Quebec audience watching Superbowl with that province's first NFL player ever to win from Quebec helped.

It makes sense, In 2013, the American audience reached it's highest ratings in history up to that point, plus I wouldn't doubt if the ratings in Saskatchewan were at a historic highs for that Superbowl as well, with Regina's Jon Ryan securing his Superbowl Championship ring that year,

plus making first-time in NFL league history plays the next year...

• Video Link

Israel Idonijie from Winnipeg played in the 2007 Super Bowl and I remember watching snippets of the game to see him, but I don't remember there being any big buzz in town about that. I'd be pretty surprised if the ratings needle moved much in Winnipeg because of him.

Personally I'd be a lot more excited if the Arizona Cardinals made it to the Super Bowl with Chris Streveler on the team... :)

Surely the World Cup has to be number one for that? The media coverage, ancillary events, pop cultural stuff and commercial activity dwarf the Super Bowl.

You can ignore the Super Bowl pretty easily, but not the World Cup (unless you're in North America). Whole countries shut down for matches. I mean, people create stop-motion Lego recreations of goals.

One billion people watched the France-Croatia final in 2018 as compared to 114 million TV viewers of the most watched Super Bowl in 2015, according to this link:
https://the18.com/soccer-news/world-...nue-tv-ratings

^ Well yeah, I meant here in North America. I guess in some ways the Super Bowl is North America's World Cup.

For some reason a year or two ago the Quebec media decided to make Laurent Duvernay-Tardif a big superstar.

In 2006 Jean-Philippe Darche (brother of NHLer Mathieu Darche) played in the Super Bowl with the Seattle Seahawks. Seattle did not win but even before the game there wasn't nearly as much hype as there was for LDT this year.

(Interestingly enough, like LDT Darche is now a doctor and was part of the Chiefs' staff this year.)

But LDT gets more attention I guess because he's a larger than life character: he went to med school and got his MD as an active NFL player (the first player ever to become a doctor), plus he does all sorts of endearing things like working part-time serving customers in his parents' bakery in Mont-St-Hilaire (south shore Montreal) during the off-season.

In Quebec at least the World Cup final pulls in about 1 million viewers, which about the same as the Super Bowl does without Laurent Duvernay-Tardif playing in it.

As a comparison, the game where the Raptors clinched the title drew 330,000 viewers in Quebec. (An all-time record audience for basketball in Quebec.)

Bianca Andreescu's win over Serena Williams at the US Open drew 750,000.

I think ratings for these kind of events are hard to actually pin down because of the number of large gatherings and viewing parties. Not to mention, the NBA Finals were 6 games, the last one being on a Thursday night.

Sounds like Toronto. Maybe not shutting down, but during the World Cup (when games are played during the day) productivity is at an all-low - with people streaming games at their desk and heading down to one of the many viewing areas in food courts and other places around the city. Country flags are everywhere and horns are honking every time a European team wins a match.

The Toronto Arrows rugby team will be on TSN (TSN2 and TSN Direct) this year, after being on Game TV last year. Should be a big improvement in visibility for them.

http://www.americasrugbynews.com/202...adcast-on-tsn/

First game is this Sunday 8pm against Austin.

Ding ding ding.

Raptors had consistently large TV audiences for a number of games over a number of weeks - Super Bowl gets eyeballs for a few hours in February. And the Raptors had viewing parties in multiple cities.

Yep - you always know when Portugal/Italy/Brazil win a match because all people will ever do is drive around with flags honking horns at every intersection. :haha: Toronto would only get crazier if India/China had any sway in world football whatsoever. I imagine Canada would experience the same World Cup shutdown if we ever qualified (which we should, soon).

That's really great for the Arrows. Interesting to see TSN pick them up over the Wolfpack...wonder if there's access to Super League rights.

TSN also picked up XFL for this spring as well.

Would we though? I mean we come close to a World Cup-style shutdown for the men's hockey gold medal final at the Olympics, but for having been in certain countries during FIFA WC games, it's still not on the same level.

And hockey is far more culturally iconic in Canada than soccer. There is no public fandom to speak of associated with the MNT in soccer at this point, though I guess it's not impossible that media and marketing hype could potentially whip people up into a frenzy given the right conditions and moment.

It would take a contender of a team for that to happen, which probably will not happen in my lifetime. Part of hockey's appeal is that we are one of the dominant countries, while in soccer we're struggling just to make it into the World Cup.

That's not to say the World Cup won't be a big deal in Canada for a long time to come, but as in the past it will be driven more by fans cheering for their favourite powerhouse countries than because of anything that Canada manages to accomplish at that level.

Yes, that's what the World Cup is for me and most Canadians - something we basically partake in "by proxy". It's still fun though - and one of my favourite sporting competitions.

If ever we do qualify - and actually my guess is that we'll be there regardless in 2026 as a "host" country - we won't make it out of the first round. Winless and even goal-less are definite possibilities.

We consistently lose to Honduras like 7-1, goal-less would almost be a certainty today.

That's why these MLS development camps are so important and seeing these guys make a splash in the international transfer market gives me some hope for the future.

Depends on where in Canada you are, I suppose. I imagine larger cities would be pretty shut down for Canada at the World Cup...we'll have to wait and see. :)

Yep. All Canada's MNT needs to do is to be somewhat respectable on the world stage and the hype will come. Beating the US last year helped a bit with that.

The last time we played Honduras we tied 0-0 and before that lost 1-2. And we beat them in 2015. One poor result nearly a decade ago is what you're referencing. :shrug:

I agree that we need to do better against Central American teams but we're not losing every game by five goals.

I'd be pretty surprised if that happened. Many hardcore soccer fans have loyalties that lie with other countries, and Canada isn't good enough at soccer to really capture the imagination of the average Canadian sports fan. It would be a big deal, but I'm not sure that it would really reach that next level of event as you are suggesting.

Now if Canada went on some crazy winning streak then yes, it could take off as the team kept rolling along... or if maybe there was a big game on a Sunday afternoon the way the 2010 Olympic men's hockey gold medal game was scheduled, then maybe. But I'd be pretty surprised if cities shut down to watch Canada vs. Ghana at noon on a Tuesday or whatever.

I was thinking this exact same thing. A lot of people I know have a deeply entrenched fandom thing going on with often powerful national soccer teams of other countries - more often than not it's due to ethnic origin (even after 4-5 generations in Canada, often not speaking much of the old language) but in some cases it's not ethnic but due to another affiliation. It would probably be pretty hard for Team Canada (Soccer) to break into that tradition and achieve the same level of fandom across the population in general, across all groups. (Which it does for hockey BTW.)

In other countries that have a shallow soccer culture like Canada but who have been more successful than us at the WC (USA, Australia), fans like these haven't generally jumped en masse on the bandwagon for the national team of the country they're living in, and the old country's team generally remains first in their hearts and minds.

And the WC has enough teams in it (and the USA and Oz haven't gotten that far in the tourney) that they haven't generally had to make a tough choice between cheering for their country of residence/citizenship against the old country if they play each other.

Sportsnet has had a mutli-year deal to broadcast Super League dating back to before the Wolfpack existed. So they haven't been available yet.Renewal happens in 2021, I'm not sure if it's before or after the season.