CTV talk back TO poll on now, Fav TO sports team.

[Tau Ceti]

You are correct Tau Ceti, I was including the CFL and NFL as football and the NHL as hockey.

According to the recent Angus Reid Pro Sports Poll of those who follow a sport "very closely" or "fairly closely:"
...
What these numbers don't tell us is why these people are "following" a particular league. If Canada is anything like the U.S, then gambling/pools are the major interest in the NFL (with 50% of fans following the NFL mainly due to gambling in some surveys). Gambling is much less prevalent in the 8-team CFL, with the majority of fans probably following the CFL because of the actual game.

Thank you for those numbers Invader. I was looking at the same tonight. Google "Pro Sports Interest in Canada" and you get three pdf's with lots of interesting stuff. I don't know if I agree that fan interest can be properly qualified as less pure because it's based on gambling or not but I take your point. I think NFL interest in Canada is broad demographically but shallow at the level of the individual fan.

If the Argos were as popular as the other teams in the city as far as "cool" factor, we would likely never have had any discussions of Argos fans hating on the other sports teams in the city.

Fully agree.

The Blue Jays definitely get better attendance but the Ratings are a different story:

Blue Jays ratings are perfectly fine. They'll finish between 400,000 and 600,000 depending on how the team does. A ton of MLB teams would kill for their situation. And again, Blue Jays ratings -- based on 162 games -- are about comparable to the CFL in its entirety not the Argos alone.

[Neely2005]

Blue Jays ratings are perfectly fine. They'll finish between 400,000 and 600,000 depending on how the team does. A ton of MLB teams would kill for their situation. And again, Blue Jays ratings -- based on 162 games -- are about comparable to the CFL in its entirety not the Argos alone.

I agree that it makes sense to compare the Blue Jays to the CFL as a whole. It's the only way that you can get to a similar number of games played per season. Plus the Blue Jays are the only MLB team in Canada so they get support from across the entire country. It's not perfect but it still shows that the CFL beats the Blue Jays in TV ratings.