Sports in Canadian culture

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by elly63

And the conundrum continues...and of course it was all people from BC watching.

Here are the most-watched sports events on English-language television for the past weekend, according to BBM Canada overnight ratings:

1. CFL, Lions at Argonauts, Sunday, TSN: 820,000
2. CFL, Alouettes at Roughriders, Saturday, TSN: 737,000
3. MLB, Blue Jays at White Sox, Sunday, Sportsnet: 633,000
4. MLB, Blue Jays at White Sox, Friday, Sportsnet: 583,000
5. MLB, Blue Jays at White Sox, Saturday, Sportsnet: 580,000
6. CFL, Eskimos at RedBlacks, Friday, TSN: 547,000
7. CFL, Stampeders at Ticats, Saturday, TSN: 490,000
8. Soccer, Women's u-20 World Cup final, Canada vs. Germany, Saturday, CBC: 461,000
9. Auto racing, NASCAR Pure Michigan 400, Sunday, TSN: 276,000 (Fox audience not measured)
10. Soccer, Women's u-20 World Cup, Korea vs. U.S., Saturday, CBC: 247,000

Were there not any MLS games on TV that week?

[Prometheus]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Were there not any MLS games on TV that week?

Of course there were. Both Toronto FC and the Vancouver Whitecaps FC played that weekend. Here is the complete Weekly Top 20 List:

1. CFL, Lions at Argonauts, Sunday, TSN: 820,000

2. CFL, Alouettes at Roughriders, Saturday, TSN: 737,000

3. MLB, Blue Jays at White Sox, Sunday, Sportsnet: 633,000

4. MLB, Blue Jays at White Sox, Friday, Sportsnet: 583,000

5. MLB, Blue Jays at White Sox, Saturday, Sportsnet: 580,000

6. CFL, Eskimos at RedBlacks, Friday, TSN: 547,000

7. CFL, Stampeders at Ticats, Saturday, TSN: 490,000

8. Soccer, Women's u-20 World Cup final, Canada vs. Germany, Saturday, CBC: 461,000

9. Auto racing, NASCAR Pure Michigan 400, Sunday, TSN: 276,000 (Fox audience not measured)

10. Soccer, Women's u-20 World Cup, Korea vs. U.S., Saturday, CBC: 247,000

11. PGA, Wyndham Championship final round, Sunday, Global: 216,000

12. Soccer, Manchester City at Newcastle, Saturday, TSN: 190,000

13. Rugby, Women's World Cup final, Canada vs. England, Sunday, TSN2: 172,000

14. PGA, Wyndham Championship third round, Saturday, Global: 168,000

15. Soccer, Whitecaps at Chivas, Saturday, TSN: 155,000

16. Soccer, Crystal Palace at Arsenal, Saturday, Sportsnet: 139,000

17. UFC, Bader vs. St. Preux, Saturday, Sportsnet360: 138,000

18. Soccer, Tottenham at West Ham, Saturday, Sportsnet: 133,000

19. Tennis, ATP Western and Southern Open semifinal, Saturday, Sportsnet: 101,000

20. Soccer, Swansea at Manchester United, Saturday, Sportsnet: 90,000

*Toronto FC doesn't usually attract enough viewers to register in the Weekly Top 20 of Canadian sports broadcasts. Three weeks ago, for example, TFC managed to attract only 22,000 viewers nationwide. And most of those were from Saskatchewan I've been told.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by Prometheus

And most of those were from Saskatchewan I believe.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Prometheus

Of course there were. Both Toronto FC and the Vancouver Whitecaps FC played that weekend. Here is the complete Weekly Top 20 List:



*Toronto FC doesn't usually attract enough viewers to register in the Weekly Top 20 of Canadian sports broadcasts. Three weeks ago, for example, TFC managed to attract only 22,000 viewers nationwide. And most of those were from Saskatchewan I've been told.

Any idea as to why the Whitecaps get better ratings than TFC?

[Prometheus]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Any idea as to why the Whitecaps get better ratings than TFC?

I think soccer just has deeper roots in Vancouver. The Whitecaps won the Soccer Bowl in 1979 during the heyday of NASL. And Vancouver is a vital part of the hottest, fiercest and longest rivalry in North American professional soccer, the Cascadia Cup, a decades-old, 3-way derby with the soccer-mad cities of Seattle and Portland.

[mistercorporate]

Originally Posted by Prometheus

Of course there were. Both Toronto FC and the Vancouver Whitecaps FC played that weekend. Here is the full list:



*Toronto FC doesn't ever get enough viewers to register in the Weekly Top 20. For context, three weeks ago TFC attracted 22,000 viewers nationwide. And most of those were from Saskatchewan I believe.

A good chunk of TFC viewers stream games on MLS Live. I have the full Rogers sports package but only tune into games via the MLS Live app (only $64 flat for a full season), it's a trick I learned from local fans since it's near impossible to watch all the TFC games without subscribing to 3 different sports channels that don't all come with the standard cable plan. You get HD streaming from anywhere on an Android device with repeats and highlights of all the games this year, including live stats detailed news, etc. from all MLS teams. It's fun watching home games with the commentary from the opposing team's pundits especially when they get thrashed...let's not talk about the last 2 games however...

One of the reasons that MLS fans watch games through the app/online rather than the networks is due to the random way they're broadcast with unusual hours/days and on different channels. One week it will be on TSN during a weekday early afternoon, then the weekend on TSN2 at around noon, then 4 days later then next game is on a weekday late night on a third channel. You have to be pretty hardcore at following schedules, with subscriptions to 3 different cable channels just to follow your home team!

The bottom line is that with a weak TV contract, minimal promotion on the networks and a very new product, TFC are able to sell out stadiums week after week and sell millions of dollars in merchandise. They would be quite profitable too but for their recent addition of $100 million in player contracts. Once they finish expanding their stadium capacity in a year (the stadium roof will take another year to complete after that), they'll be profitable again. No CFL team comes close to them in terms of fan support to finance a $30 million and growing annual payroll. Once the new TV money kicks in and the salary cap increases (expected to double this year) with an additional designated player slot, you can fully expect the new stadium to sell out requiring a further expansion. This is not the mark of a team or league without massive support.

I went for a walk around town yesterday evening and saw 3 different people with TFC gear and about a half dozen with Blue Jays gear, all within a couple hours. I have yet to see someone wear Argos gear in this city after 20+ years of living here. Please continue to minimize the opinions of Torontonians who insist that there's hardly anyone here who follows or watches the Argos. The Jays, Leafs and TFC are common water cooler talk, the Argos are nowhere to be seen but in these interpretations of media stats from CFL fanboys on this message board...

[esquire]

Originally Posted by mistercorporate

The bottom line is that with a weak TV contract, minimal promotion on the networks and a very new product, TFC are able to sell out stadiums week after week and sell millions of dollars in merchandise. They would be quite profitable too but for their recent addition of $100 million in player contracts. Once they finish expanding their stadium capacity in a year (the stadium roof will take another year to complete after that), they'll be profitable again. No CFL team comes close to them in terms of fan support to finance a $30 million and growing annual payroll. Once the new TV money kicks in and the salary cap increases (expected to double this year) with an additional designated player slot, you can fully expect the new stadium to sell out requiring a further expansion. This is not the mark of a team or league without massive support.

It's not hard to see the link between the longer TFC season and increased payroll. More games = more money. If the CFL played 25-odd home games per team (which you obviously cannot do in pro football because of the physical toll that the game takes), then it would have roughly the same payroll as MLS, minus a few million dollars. (Assuming 20,000 fans at an average price of $50 a pop = $1,000,000 gate per game). It is not as though the MLS payroll is larger than the CFL's by orders of magnitude like the NBA's, for instance. MLS has what the CFL payroll would be if the CFL played a MLS-length season.

I went for a walk around town yesterday evening and saw 3 different people with TFC gear and a dozen with Blue Jays gear, all within a couple hours. I have yet to see someone Argos gear in this city after 20+ years of living here. Please continue to minimize the opinions of Torontonians who insist that there's hardly anyone here who follows or watches the Argos, the Jays, Leafs and TFC are common water cooler talk, the Argos are nowhere to be seen but in these interpretations of media stats from CFL fanboys on this message board...

Then how do you explain away the numbers? When, for example, an Argos game gets 820,000 viewers but a TFC game gets 2.7% of that viewership... are you telling us that there are hundreds of thousands of people watching online? Or that there are half a million people in Saskatchewan watching Argo games? Neither of those really seem plausible.

[Prometheus]

Originally Posted by mistercorporate

I went for a walk around town yesterday evening and saw 3 different people with TFC gear and about a half dozen with Blue Jays gear, all within a couple hours. I have yet to see someone wear Argos gear in this city after 20+ years of living here. Please continue to minimize the opinions of Torontonians who insist that there's hardly anyone here who follows or watches the Argos. The Jays, Leafs and TFC are common water cooler talk, the Argos are nowhere to be seen but in these interpretations of media stats from CFL fanboys on this message board...

Personal anecdotal observations about jersey sightings and water cooler talk VERSUS objective, scientifically-collected empirical data from BBM Canada regarding what people are actually watching.

Hmmmm.....I wonder what carries more evidentiary weight? LOL!

By the way, every CFL game is streamed live online and is available on demand too. Yeah, soccer fans aren't the only ones who have computers and smartphones.

Let's repeat the only objective data provided so far:

TFC: 22,000 viewers
Argos: 820,000 viewers

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by mistercorporate

A good chunk of TFC viewers stream games on MLS Live. ...

And Whitecaps fans in Vancouver don't have access to streaming? Maybe they don't. Anyone know?

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by mistercorporate

I went for a walk around town yesterday evening and saw 3 different people with TFC gear and about a half dozen with Blue Jays gear, all within a couple hours. I have yet to see someone wear Argos gear in this city after 20+ years of living here. Please continue to minimize the opinions of Torontonians who insist that there's hardly anyone here who follows or watches the Argos. The Jays, Leafs and TFC are common water cooler talk, the Argos are nowhere to be seen but in these interpretations of media stats from CFL fanboys on this message board...

I am not trying to make excuses here but aside from the fact that some (not saying you do) go out of their way to ignore the CFL, there are a few things about merchandising and visibility that are not as anecdotal as what I just referred to.

For starters, the CFL absolutely sucks at merchandising. It's better than it was before when it did not know what the word merchandising meant. But it still sucks at merchandising. The only teams that get merchandising are Saskatchewan obviously, and to a lesser degree Montreal.

MLS merchandising follows the hyperdriven American pro sports merchandising model. They know what they are doing. Since a rising tide lifts all boats, TFC and L'Impact (and I assume the Whitecaps) benefit from this. I see more Impact gear and promo items here in Gatineau, in Montreal and across Quebec than I do Alouettes stuff. And yet I still believe the Alouettes have a bigger following than L'Impact. By a decent margin.

Also, soccer is "in" among the hipster crowd. It's very 21st century, worldly, cosmopolitan. CFL, especially in Toronto, is not. Obviously TFC have a decent fan base of real soccer fans but they also have a bunch of "fashionable" fans. The Argos don't.

[esquire]

If we want to get into anecdotal observations, a good as place for those as any is the comment section of the Toronto Sun. It's clear that any Leafs story will generate tons and tons of commentary. Everyone and their dog weighs in on the latest Leafs news. Any Jays and Raptors story will also have a number of comments. The Argos, TFC and Rock might have at most a few, if any, comments per story.

The point is that anyone who thinks that TFC is surging in popularity with hordes of devoted followers probably needs a reality check.

[mistercorporate]

Originally Posted by esquire

If we want to get into anecdotal observations, a good as place for those as any is the comment section of the Toronto Sun. It's clear that any Leafs story will generate tons and tons of commentary. Everyone and their dog weighs in on the latest Leafs news. Any Jays and Raptors story will also have a number of comments. The Argos, TFC and Rock might have at most a few, if any, comments per story.

The point is that anyone who thinks that TFC is surging in popularity with hordes of devoted followers probably needs a reality check.

There you guys go again with your world-class logic, the Toronto Sun is a joke newspaper, given out freely at construction sites and factories in the GTA, and well read among right wing nutjobs. Toronto FC attracts a completely different demographic. TFC attracts a younger and more educated demographic and a good chunk of their supporters are also women. I have nothing against the CFL but some of their supporters are so myopic and illogical that it blows the mind, at least you guys haven't gone down the path of Toronto-bashing which is quite common with CFL fans nowadays...

I've lost track of "F**k Toronto!" type rants in various media/forums by CFL fans. It seems that the city is always to blame for the Argos providing a crappily branded and promoted product. Toronto has a reputation in North America for fiercely supporting their teams even if they suck on the field, but the Argos are flopping here so suddenly we're a s**t sports town, rightttt...

[esquire]

Originally Posted by mistercorporate

There you go again with your world-class logic, the Toronto Sun is a joke newspaper, given out freely at construction sites and factories in the GTA, and well read among right wing nutjobs, Toronto FC attracts a completely different demographic. TFC attracts a younger and more educated demographic and a good chunk of their supporters are also women.

Whether you agree with the Sun's editorial views or not, you can't deny that it is an influential newspaper when it comes to sports coverage.

So where can I find the equivalent amount of commentary and fan engagement for TFC? I checked the Star's sports page and it's no different. This article about TFC's most recent game had all of 2 comments.

http://www.thestar.com/sports/tfc/20...road_test.html

[esquire]

It's funny that despite having cold, hard numbers to mull over, mistercorporate just cannot accept the fact that the Argos draw on the order of 25 to 40 times the per-game TV viewership that TFC gets.

[FrankieFlowerpot]

I also highly dispute the fact that a good chunk of TFC fans watch the games on MLS Live.

Aren't most TFC games (the ones on TSN and TSN2) blacked out anyway?

[mistercorporate]

Originally Posted by FrankieFlowerpot

I also highly dispute the fact that a good chunk of TFC fans watch the games on MLS Live.

Aren't most TFC games (the ones on TSN and TSN2) blacked out anyway?

You can still watch them on MLS live, just a different commentary track (the opposing team's).

[esquire]

TFC ratings are tiny because their fans are too technologically advanced for TV. Now I've heard everything.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by esquire

TFC ratings are tiny because their fans are too technologically advanced for TV. Now I've heard everything.

While it appears the entire Greater Vancouver region is still stuck with UHF-VHF black and white TVs!

[Stryker]

Originally Posted by esquire

TFC ratings are tiny because their fans are too technologically advanced for TV. Now I've heard everything.

You keep projecting these sentiment that are not there.

Like somehow everything we do is in reference to another group of people.

I can tell you as a fact 95 percent of my close friends dont own TVs, its not a complicated situation.

And we are all typically very open to soccer, and not the least bit football.

You can call it an anecdote, but it is the truth, and I have no reason to believe we are unique in this.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by Stryker

You keep projecting these sentiment that are not there.

Like somehow everything we do is in reference to another group of people.

I can tell you as a fact 95 percent of my close friends dont own TVs, its not a complicated situation.

And we are all typically very open to soccer, and not the least bit football.

You can call it an anecdote, but it is the truth, and I have no reason to believe we are unique in this.

Fair enough. But if there are 500,000 fans watching TFC games on their MacBooks or Android devices, how do you know that there isn't a similar number of Argo fans doing the same thing?

I doubt TFC/soccer fans are the only people to have rid themselves of television sets.