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The NHL 2024-25 Season is set to begin on Oct. 8. Pre-season games are already in full swing, stacked up against the final stretch of the baseball season and the early weeks of NFL play. The CFL is deep into its season. Basketball is set to start mere weeks after the NHL.
With all these sports available to sports fans, what do they choose to watch?
A new Leger poll, commissioned by the Association for Canadian Studies, exclusive to the National Post, points to hockey as the clear winner. That can’t be a surprise in Canada, but it may be changing. The July 2024 survey of 1,784 respondents shows that basketball and soccer are gaining viewership among 18-24 year-olds. They have the lowest percentage of hockey-watchers: 32%. Meanwhile, 19% of the same age group preferred basketball and 18% voted for soccer.
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That’s a distinct difference from fans 35-44, of whom 42% prefer hockey, with only 11% focusing on basketball and 14% on soccer. For fans 65 and over, the preference for basketball drops to a mere 2% and soccer to just 11%.
Hockey fans predominate among watchers who identified as white, while basketball and soccer are almost as watched as hockey among visible minorities. Canadians who identified as Black chose basketball (44%) versus hockey (10%). Canadians of Latin American descent chose soccer (37%) over hockey (30%).
There’s a wealth gap, too. Canadians with an income of $150K or more are more likely to watch hockey over the season (48.1%) compared with Canadians earning between $20K and almost $40K (33.3%).
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Basketball viewing increases among Canadians with higher education: 14.4% for watchers with a master’s degree and 9.1 % for Canadians with high school or vocational training. It’s the opposite for hockey: 43.7% among those who have high school or vocational training and 32.6% for those with a master’s degree.
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Politically, just slightly more Tories watch hockey than Liberals, but otherwise, sports-watching preferences are similar no matter how the watcher votes.
Geographically, Western Canadians are more avid hockey-watchers than Eastern Canadians. For example, 57% of Albertans prefer hockey versus 29% of Prince Edward Islanders.
Has the Toronto Maple Leafs’ habit of choking in the play-offs dampened enthusiasm for hockey in the Greater Toronto Area? Maybe. The poll shows only 30% of GTA residents follow hockey, whereas residents of other Canadian cities are more enthusiastic: Greater Montreal (38%), Greater Ottawa (43%), Calgary (43%), Vancouver (42%) and Edmonton way out in front (75%).
Sports preferences are clearly split between urban and suburban/rural watchers. In rural areas, 45% prefer hockey, while in the suburbs, that number is 41.8%. In urban areas, the number drops to 34.8%. In comparison, basketball leads in the cities (12.4%) versus the suburbs (8.1%) and rural Canada (2.8%).
Hockey leads for English-speaking Canadians, while soccer competes with hockey for Canadians whose first language is neither English, nor French.
Looking at the gap between male and female watchers, hockey and football are more preferred by men: hockey, 45% men to 34% women; football, 23% men to 11% women.
The first puck-drop is soon but on any given day what is showing on a TV could certainly vary depending on who is sitting in front of it.
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