NCAA MM is wildly popular. TV ratings don't capture things like office brackets, general pop culture, etc.

Judging from TSN's results so far this season I can see why.

There usually still is, AFAIK, but it depends on who the rights partner is and how much exposure they're giving it. SN/Rogers did literally nothing for the CHL for years.

Yes. Generalizing, but younger people's purchasing habits are still moldable. Younger people are working with more disposable income. Older folks already know what they like and aren't going to go out and buy something new. There's more value in 18-34 or 18-55 numbers for things like advertisers, social media interaction, public exposure etc. NASCAR has 3x-4x the viewers in the US than F1 but F1 nearly matches them on 18-50 viewers most of the time.

Many of the sports that do well on Canadian TV are heavily slanted towards 55+ because those are the people primarily still captured by ratings. The commercials and types of advertisers running during events are always an easy indicator of how old the audience is.

Not on cable, anyway, and TV ratings only capture those cable numbers, unless folks like TSN explicitly release streaming numbers.

NCAA MM TV ratings are still sky-high and at near record levels in the US, so there is the question of why it isn't quite following the same path in Canada.

That said, I would never say that it hasn't become quite popular in Canada over the years.

If it hadn't it might actually register as the most unsuccessful mass media marketing blitz in history.

They've even been pushing it really hard in Quebec in the past five years or so. Especially RDS which is of course allied with TSN and, by extension, ESPN. Though AFAIK we don't have any live coverage of games on Quebec networks until the very end of the tournament. But they do chat it up on sportscasts and magazine shows occasionally. Not long ago you never used to hear anything about it here.

We only have one window to examine in Canada thus far this year. Given COVID's down years i'd give it another week or two before saying anything definitive on this.

Sounds like growth to me.

Obviously if you push seeds already in the soil down further into the ground to the point they get no warmth from the sun, and lay a whole bunch of new seeds down on top near the surface with tons of fertilizer, the new seeds will flourish.

No doubt about that!

Is that the real issue here. I'd think the NCAA tournament has streaming options that the curling does not, and the numbers don't reflect that.

Do we have access to TSN streaming figures for NCAA? Again, we're working on just one MM window for Canada and don't have access to numbers for other windows or games thus far.

I'm assuming curling streaming numbers are less than NCAA for both legal and illegal streams in Canada. Curling's audience is going to be primarily focused on cable figures given demographics of viewing audience.

I actually met a person last night who watches NCAA basketball all season and knew the teams and players and he was from Newfoundland. Other than that I can count one on hand the amount of people I interact with (young and old) who know what they are talking about when it comes to MM.

I picked a bracket because my son wanted me to be in his bracket group but I had no idea what I was doing and haven't watched a second of MM. Though I do check the SCORE app (which is fantastic btw) quite a bit for all sorts of sports.

I have a group of buddies I hang out with about once a week. We've been doing this for years. The nucleus is a legacy group from back when our kids did organized activities together. I am usually the oldest of the group but the age spans from late 30s to early 50s. It's mostly Québécois francophones with some guys of immigrant origins who have integrated with the Québécois majority. And a dash of Franco-Ontariens.

We often talk sports: mostly NHL and hockey in general but also Olympics, MLS, FIFA WC, tennis, F1 and combat sports. A bit of NFL, a bit of CFL. Baseball very occasionally.

Over all these years NCAA MM has never come up in the discussions.

A LETTER TO OUR FANS: WE’RE FINALLY HOME

It's hard to believe this is actually happening, but the Arrows will play at home for the first time since June 2019! I'm getting very excited now that this weekend is finally upon us.

Arrows up!

Was the IIHF world hockey championship final between Canada and Finland broadcast anywhere in English?

I watched it on RDS network 1 but did not see it on TSN, Sportsnet or even the CBC.

CBC were showing rugby between Fiji and Samoa, with their own announcers!

Sportsnet also had some regional Australian rugby (Warringah?) on one of their channels.

I caught the OT on Freesports

I didn't actually watch, so I don't know if it was actually on, but I just scrolled back on my Bell Fibe channel guide and see it was on TSN at 1pm. Of the 5 TSN channels, IIHF was on 2 of them, French Open Tennis was on 2 and Nascar Canada and F1 were on the other.

I didn't watch the game but I certainly saw enough mentions of it in my twitter feed to make me believe it was available somewhere?!

I didn't even know it was being played I was at the gym with 20 different tvs on and they only had basketball and race car driving on.

OK thanks.

CF montreal only averaging 13700 fans a game 26th in mls attendance. Team is winning so I gotta think the location of Stade Saputo must be hurting them? I wonder if they relocated to molson stadium and renovated it would they have better attendance downtown?

Montreal will be in danger of moving if they don't get those significant renovations to stade saputo in the near future. They play in an MLS 1.0 stadium which doesn't provide the revenue streams that the other newer stadiums enjoy. Same applies to Vancouver. Both teams are last in terms of revenue in the MLS losing buckets of money every year.

I heard whitcecaps are on pace to losing 10 million per year again this year and their player payroll is only 11 million. They are only averaging 16000 and change attendance wise this year.

Yes, I'm sure they will lose at least that amount. The club is pretty terrible and has been mostly terrible for the past several seasons. The Lions receive a small percentage of concession revenues and they do not receive any ancillary revenues from things like parking or concerts at the BC Place. This is another team that is likely in trouble even though they invested money in some training infrastructure and their academy. Unless the cheap ownership is willing to invest significant money into a stadium for which they control all the revenues, I think they would also relocate to the US if the right offer and stadium came along.

Attendance for the Canadian Premier League looks pretty bad for the most part. The league definitely lost momentum due to COVID.

I try to watch whatever highlights of the games whenever available:

-Edmonton games announce attendance around 500, but it looks like there are around 100 people there.
-Winnipeg games announce crowds around 2500, but it looks like 1000 or so people in attendance.
-Calgary games announce crowds of 3-4000...looks about right.
-Pacific FC games announce crowds around 3,000...looks about right
- Halifax Wanderers no longer sellout but come pretty close so they are still going strong.
-York...no idea, but I remember their attendance was pretty terrible in the past.
-Hamilton averages around 3,000...looks about right.
-Ottawa averaging between 3-4000...hard to tell how many people are there as almost the entire crowd is on the same side as the camera.

Attendance is noticeably down from 3 year ago. I'm sure some of that may be due to the lingering effects of COVID, but not necessarily all of it. It will be interesting to see how some of the teams deal with terrible attendance and financial losses in the coming years leading up to the 2026 World Cup. Will they be willing to sustain losses that likely add up to millions of dollars in the hopes of a turnaround in 5 or 6 years...or will some owners throw up their hands and walk away?

Edmonton is a team to watch. The owner had to find additional ownership/investors for the team last year or earlier this year from what I heard. That team has been hemorraging money for years going back to their North American Soccer League days.