Except in BC, where it’s not popular again. When I was living in Vancouver, the BC Lions and the entire league were considered a joke in my circles. It definitely was not considered a “real” pro sport team like the Canucks were. As a data point, I just surveyed our techs in the shop. Out of 11, 2 knew the name of the only CFL team in the province, and one of those two made a Rough Rider’s joke that was last relevant in 1996.
They are so effective at this that for the longest time, I assumed that they were the only pro baseball team in all of Canada.
I’ve heard people say it’s cheaper to fly to Phoenix and go to a Coyotes game “Plenty of good seats available” than get Maple Leafs home tickets. And now they actually seem to be on the rise…
That’s why I qualified it by saying “somewhat”. Even in a relatively successful CFL city like Edmonton, the Eskimos are kind of second-class citizens compared to the Oilers in many people’s minds, for instance.
I’ve only seen a couple of CFL games, I saw some decent football, better than college ball I’d say. But I’m not surprised that CFL falls way below the hockey in popularity in Canada.
In general, kids play hockey but don’t play football, so when they watch sports, the watch hockey but don’t watch football even once they are not longer active in playing sports.
I’m an American, and I couldn’t come close to answering any of those questions about the NFL, despite football being shown on 226% of all public-area television sets in the US for 19 months out of every year. Draw whatever conclusions you want to from that.
What a person plays and what they watch aren’t connected. There’s surprisingly little correlation.
In North America the obvious example would be what we call soccer and most other places call football. Soccer has been one of the most popular participation sports for American and Canadian kids for thirty or forty years now, but professional soccer remains a second class citizen among professional sports leagues. If in fact participation turned people into fans, Major League Soccer should be as big as any other North American sports league. It’s not even close, though.
Participation in American football (gridiron) is FAR less than soccer, and in fact is less than basketball, or baseball/softball, and yet it remains the most popular spectator sport in the United States; The NFL makes more in a week than Major League Soccer makes in a season. Gymnastics is a very popular participation sport - not quite at football levels, but still pretty popular - and yet is virtually nonexistent as a spectator sport unless the Olympics are on. On the other hand, automobile racing is a reasonably popular spectator sport, though of course very few people actually race cars.
