By Jeff Wong
Last Saturday’s (June 24th) edition of the Toronto Star published the results of a poll conducted by the Solutions Research Group. To my surprise and delight, the popularity of basketball in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal is surging ahead due to their growing ethnic populations.
The table published in the Star is reproduced below. The accompanying article is here. The original news release is in this PDF. The most interesting quotes are:
“Overall, the leading sport among fast-growing visible minority groups is Basketball (37%)”
“In Canada’s largest three markets – Toronto, Montreal & Vancouver – projections show that the fan base for basketball will grow by 56% in the next 10 years, followed by soccer (44%) … hockey’s (fan base will expand) by 19%”
There’s the answer to all those who say b-ball can’t survive in Canada!
Note also that 55% of Italians in these cities say hockey is their favourite sport; basketball doesn’t even enter the conversation. That should change over the next few years, I think, with the promising leadership of the Raptors’ Bryan Colangelo and Maurizio Gherardini.
I read this article as well last week and loved it! My dad has long called me “the yank” because I like hoops more than hockey so it was great to see more Canucks jumping on the bandwagon.
This must be due to the great writing of Jeff Wong, Chris Clarke and Scott Carefoot 😀