Bingo!

What do you mean by accessible, though? I don't think basketball is the kind of sport that Canadians are generally unfamiliar with or don't really understand, like, for example, cricket or rugby.

Is basketball really that unpopular in Winnipeg? I'm very curious to know what the local ratings are.

I work with a lot of young Filipino and Black dudes.. a ton of them watch NBA religiously (anecdotal of course, but I definitely hear way more talk about it around my work than the CFL for example.)

Baseball is definitely not more accessible to participate in than basketball. And race is a very big part of the argument of why basketball is not as popular outside the GTA and in the ROC.

Without a doubt that is the core NBA audience in Winnipeg, young Asian and black men. Basketball is particularly huge in the Philippines and the enthusiasm is visible here (no different than, say Italians or Portuguese and their love for soccer).

But once you get outside of that demographic, basketball fandom here falls off a cliff.

Three points:

• 1) Age Demographics;
• 2) Immigrant Demographics; and,
• 3) Age of franchise/league impact in country.

[Source]

The Canadian Youth Sports Report (2014), by the Solutions Research Group, highlighted the interest that young Canadians have in basketball:

"Thirty-two percent (32%) of Canadian kids and youth follow the NHL, ranked #1 in all youth demographics. The NBA is in the #2 spot in Toronto, Vancouver and among New Canadian youth. MLS ranks #3 in Vancouver and #2 in Montreal. The research suggests that youth engagement with professional leagues is an area of concern, however: even among teens 13-17, 43% do not follow any professional league."

They also echoed the beliefs from the G&M Article:

Also Sportsnet:

[Source]

Essentially, the Jays have had forty years to become an engrained image in the Canadian imagination (particularly with the WS wins in the early 90s) compared to the Raptors' 20 years. This sort of accessibility, coverage, and exposure needs a generation cycle or two to have full effect on interest and participation.

The put things bluntly, the Raptors are going to be more accessible in areas with higher ethnic minority and immigrants counts, which essentially means Canada's largest cities. Outside of that it wouldn't be a stretch to say that the Jays would be more accessible for bandwagons. The more that Canada's demographics shift towards ethnic minorities the more that interest will shift from the Jays to the Raptors, if only looking at those two in a vacuum.

I didn't imply participating in the sport, I meant watching and feeling culturally attached to the sport.

To put this in the most obvious of ways (it's Leafs, not Jays, but still relevant):

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bmzwhv8IUAEobi2.jpg:large
CTV, Twitter

https://i.cbc.ca/1.4073357.149248406...pg?imwidth=100
CBC

EDIT: You beat me to it! Lol

A picture is worth a thousand words. You just have to look at who shows up to Maple Leaf Square/Jurassic Park for Leafs and Raptors games.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/btoimage/pr...ue-w_1300_.jpg

https://media.gettyimages.com/photos...re-id470688042

^^ In Toronto, basketball definitely has a far more diverse fan base. It's also more demographically representative of Toronto. The Raptors will soon be Toronto's #1 team; it's a mathematical certainty. The Leafs fan base is large but not growing. The Raptors fan base is large and growing extremely fast.

Basketball will become Canada's Game and it's not just because of what's happening in Toronto. Basketball Canada is noticing a huge surge in interest nationally. In a way, it's all just coming full circle. Basketball's roots are Canadian.

As others have pointed out it's hard to say. What's clear is that interest in basketball and the NBA is mushrooming nationally. In the end it might not matter to the Raptors how many Canadians watch.

Consider this article from 2 years ago. According to this up to 10 million people in China watch the Raptors? That's 10 times more than all the viewers in Canada. Being the most popular basketball team in China is the big prize.


http://www.bladecreativebranding.com...hinese-market/


• Video Link

Are you implying that basketball is culturally foreign to Canadians? It says more about how insular some regions of Canada are and how insular hockey folk tend to be, in particular. Perhaps Ottawa has little basketball history but I'd be wary of extrapolating that to all of Canada.

I'm an immigrant to Canada from a non-basketball playing country: England. My first exposure to basketball was when I moved to Halifax at 11. All the kids grew up playing, watching, or attending basketball. It felt as Canadian as hockey or heading to the cottage.

How bizarre. In the Maritimes basketball is the sport of old stock Canadians. Immigration to that region is relatively small but they seem to like basketball too.

Easy now, first, some of the sentiments you read these days are that basketball suddenly appeared with the Raptors which is patently ridiculous. Basketball was played in the schools and on the playgrounds many decades before the Raps came on the scene. The same goes for soccer being played in the schools, both had high participation rates across the country except that it was in the schools.

However, no one ever took them seriously as a way to have a career and there was no coverage on TV to speak of (pre 1980s) so let's not get carried away here.

I was into basketball and went to a week long camp every year at Mount A but that was not common. The only (organized) sport I didn't play as a kid was hockey and that was because everyone else did and I had to be different but hockey still was the number one sport by far.

I'm implying that, generally-speaking, Canadians are more willing to bandwagon a baseball team than a basketball team. Baseball, today, appeals to a broader swath of Canadians than basketball does. In the future, basketball will appeal to a wider swath of Canadians.

You'll have to expand on this.

A Stanley Cup final involving the Leafs would make all of those numbers look like chump change.

So would one involving the Habs - it might pull in over 4 million viewers in Quebec alone and probably as many in the rest of the country.

I don't see what's insular about liking your country's national sport and expecting it to get a lot of attention. Given its history and sustained popularity.

And I say this as a person who used to be a huge hockey fan. Some years I had mini season ticket packages for both the Habs and the Sens, believe it or not. But I a guy who has gradually tuned out the NHL as something I follow closely. I am now at best a casual hockey fan. Though I am watching Leafs-Bruins as I type this.


I don't think JHikka can be said to be a typical Ottawa guy. He's from New Brunswick I think and only moved to Ottawa fairly recently.

James Naismith the inventor of basketball was from a small town 45 minutes west of Ottawa, for what's it's worth.

I don't think Ottawa has any more or any less historical basketball culture than any other city in the country except Halifax. This arguably includes Toronto before the Raptors came along.

Absolutely. The Vancouver SCF in 2011 averaged 5.4M with Game 7 fetching 8.64M. I'd imagine a Leafs Eastern Conference Final would fetch somewhere in the 4-5M neighbourhood. Their first round games are usually between 2-3M.

For what it's worth, the Jays were hitting between 4-5M for ALCS/ALDS. I'd be curious to see how high that could go for a WS.

Nobody is ever actually from Ottawa - it's a myth. :P

I don't dispute this is happening, and this won't be a popular comment, but it's hard not to see it as a "failing" that the kids of newcomers to the country haven't been turned into fans of the national sport in greater numbers than they have.

Basketball is obviously way more popular than hockey globally but a lot of these kids (maybe most of them) aren't necessarily coming from basketball hotbed countries, and so their passion for the game isn't really driven by anything that's Canadian-originated nor is it driven by the sports culture of their parents' country of origin. We all know what it's driven by.

While the Blue Jays broadcasters in Quebec are generally satisfied with their ratings, the second largest market in the country is a bit of dead zone for them - relative to the rest of the country anyway. (Jays playoff games in recent years drew way fewer viewers than midweek Habs early season games.)

The reason I am bringing this up is that in Quebec at least any Stanley Cup final involving a Canadian team would draw way more viewers than the Jays in the World Series.

I worked with a young guy from Winnipeg about 10 years ago and he was of Asian origin (I won't out him by naming the country but it's not a basketball hotbed at all.) He was first generation born in Canada.

Anyway he was really big on the NBA and largely indifferent to the NHL and the CFL.

Totally anecdotal of course but he was my first indicator that something was up.

Until then I had always assumed that kids growing up in Canada regardless of origin were likely to be into hockey just like we were. Certainly in the 80s the gangs I hung out were mostly old stock anglophones and francophones with a decent-sized chunk of immigrant guys thrown into the mix - and they were definitely into hockey too. I played hockey on the ice and on the road with kids from the most non-hockey cultures imaginable.

My father and father-in-law are quite typical of this.

They're both in their 70s from different regions of the country, and while baseball is not in their top sports (which are NHL and CFL followed by NFL probably) they will watch the Jays playoff runs even though they're not watching the Jays right now and likely won't this summer either.

I doubt either of them has ever watched an entire NBA game. They don't watch basketball any more than they watch soccer.

Actually I think my dad watches more soccer as he watches the World Cup to some degree.

It might not be as cut and dried but I think these interests are fairly common in younger generations such as mine - I am in my late 40s.

^ It doesn't help that amateur hockey became almost singularly focused on elite development. I'm not sure how it is in other parts of the country but high school hockey has become more popular in these parts as a means to continue playing reasonably competitive hockey without necessarily signing your life away at 16 so you can ride the bus for years in the juniors. But that's still kind of the exception.

No matter how you slice it, hockey is going to be a huge commitment of time, energy and money. And you have to start young and continue up the ranks. Not a lot of immigrant families will have the inclination to put up with all that. So naturally the immigrant kids will gravitate to pick up basketball or soccer where all you need is shoes and a ball, and then end up on school teams with the skills they gained that way. And not surprisingly, it ends up creating lifelong fans along the way.