The popularity of a franchise can change drastically over just a few years.
Recency bias can play a big role in everything from attendance to, nowadays, social media followings, with championships generally leading to more fans.
Still, this isn’t the only determining factor as, otherwise, the Toronto Raptors and Toronto FC would be the outright most popular Canadian sports franchise as the only major league championship winners of the last three decades.
Before we delve into the methodology of attempting to get a view of the popularity of Canadian sports franchises, here’s how the top five of our rankings ended up.
Top 5 Most Popular Canadian Sports Teams
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Toronto Maple Leafs
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Toronto Raptors
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Toronto Blue Jays
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Montréal Canadiens
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Edmonton Oilers
Here’re the key factors taken into consideration, with a longer rankings list at the foot of the page.
Canadian Sports Franchise Attendance Percentages
Some Canadian sports teams will have a smaller capacity than others for functionality purposes, such as a hockey team needing an enclosed environment to enable playable ice surfaces.
The size of the stadiums shouldn’t weigh on a franchise’s popularity ranking, but the attendance percentages could.
Still, this isn’t perfect as it mostly secludes the look to local popularity, and ticket pricing and the number of games each season will sway the numbers.
By comparison to the other teams in the major leagues, Canadian clubs regularly bring in top-ten attendance figures, but here’s how last season’s numbers (per ESPN, HockeyDB, and CFLdb) reflect as a percentage of stadium capacity:
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Montréal Canadiens: 99.9%
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Toronto Raptors: 99.9%
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Toronto Maple Leafs: 99.8%
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Vancouver Canucks: 98.9%
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CF Montréal: 98.4%
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Edmonton Oilers: 97.3%
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Calgary Flames: 93.1%
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Winnipeg Jets: 91.7%
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Hamilton Tiger-Cats: 91.6%
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Montréal Alouettes: 88.3%
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Winnipeg Blue Bombers: 86.7%
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Ottawa Senators: 86.6%
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Saskatchewan Roughriders: 82.2%
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Ottawa REDBLACKS: 81.8%
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Toronto Blue Jays: 78.9%
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Toronto FC: 74.5%
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BC Lions: 67.3%
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Calgary Stampeders: 65.8%
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Toronto Argonauts: 47.3%
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Edmonton Elks: 42.8%
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Vancouver Whitecaps: 33.9%
Again, average attendance figures like this can be misleading – especially as statistics to hinge a popularity ranking on.
For example, the Edmonton Elks actually boasted the second-highest average attendance in the CFL.
Survey Results for Canada’s Favourite Sports Teams
A whole host of favourite team surveys have taken place over the years, especially when it comes to the competition among Canadian teams for Canadian fans.
In 2017, a Sportsnet survey of over 1,500 Canadians concluded that the Toronto Maple Leafs are narrowly the most popular team in Canada, followed by the Habs.
This was at a time (after the 2016/17 season) when Montréal topped the Atlantic Division, and the Buds had narrowly made it into the postseason.
In a more wide-ranging and recent survey relayed by Statista, it was found that the Maple Leafs, once again, narrowly pip the Canadiens, with one percent more fans but the same count of diehard fans.
That said, above the two NHL teams in this survey from December 2019 were the Toronto Raptors, with fewer fans but more diehard fans, and then the Toronto Blue Jays, with 25 percent of respondents being fans and 29 percent being diehard fans.
From the toughest division in baseball, if the Blue Jays make good on their +2000 odds to win the World Series in the MLB odds, they can expect their fan following to see another uptick.
Canadian Sports Teams Ranked by Social Media Followings
Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have been around for a long time now, and there’s an argument to be made for the following counts not properly reflecting true engagement due to the number of people who stop using the platforms.
If the followings of these social media staples were to be taken at face value, however, the Raptors, Blue Jays, Maple Leafs, and Canadiens would, again, boast the largest fan bases.
However, perhaps the best platform to look to is the newest of the major sites: TikTok.
With the general population putting aside its very sketchy ethics, it’s become the go-to social media for entertainment and brand engagement while being more reflective of current following trends.
At the time of writing, here’s how the Canadian sports franchises rank per their TikTok followings:
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Toronto Maple Leafs: 514,000
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Toronto Raptors: 475,000
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Toronto Blue Jays: 390,000
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Montréal Canadiens: 359,000
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Winnipeg Jets: 341,000
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Vancouver Canucks: 276,000
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Edmonton Oilers: 228,000
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Toronto FC: 189,000
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Vancouver Whitecaps: 120,000
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Calgary Flames: 104,000
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Ottawa Senators: 70,000
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BC Lions: 41,000
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CF Montréal: 37,000
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Toronto Argonauts: 20,500
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Edmonton Elks: 19,000
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Ottawa REDBLACKS: 15,100
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Winnipeg Blue Bombers: 15,000
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Saskatchewan Roughriders: 10,000
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Montréal Alouettes: 8,000
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Hamilton Tiger-Cats: 4,000
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Calgary Stampeders: 4,000
However, the issue with using social media as a gauge of popularity is that content that isn’t specifically to do with team success often gets the most engagement, and social media platforms are international.
So, they can’t help too much in the rankings of the most popular sports franchises per Canadian sports fans.
Plus, team engagement on social media goes beyond just the team accounts and to the players and other personalities.
For example, the one million followers obsessed with the antics of Gritty, the Philadelphia Flyers mascot, could be counted as Flyers fans in some metrics as they’re engaging with the franchise through Gritty.
Revealing Canadian Sports Team Popularity with Search Volume
Partially influenced by postseason progress and championship triumphs, Google Trends can still be used as an overall look at how often people are searching for Canadian sports franchises, especially during the regular season.
Over the past 12 months, looking at searches in Canada, Toronto ranked as the highest on average interest, followed by the Edmonton Oilers. Both got a post-season bump, while regular season contemporaries Montréal and Vancouver fell away in April.
Next season, if either the Oilers or Buds can fulfil their frontrunner Stanley Cup odds of +800 or +900 in the sport betting, Canada will undoubtedly search for the teams more and raise their respective popularity in this metric.
As for the other major Canadian sports teams, the Raptors and Blue Jays crush the Vancouver Whitecaps, Toronto FC, and CF Montréal in search interest over that same 12-month span in Canada.
The Raptors enjoyed a huge spell of dominance during the regular season, while baseball was in its offseason.
However, when in play, the Blue Jays boasted at least triple the search interest than the Raptors in Canada over the last 12 months.
Bringing the biggest hitters together over the last 12 months, the rankings go: Blue Jays, Maple Leafs, Oilers, Canadiens, Raptors.
Over the last five years, however, the Raptors and Buds are tied for the top spot, followed by the Blue Jays, and then the Oilers and Habs.
CFL teams were also run against the major league franchises, but there wasn’t a comparison to be made.
That said, over the last five years, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers and Saskatchewan Roughriders have been the most searched of the CFL clubs in Canada.
Final Rankings of Canadian Sports Teams by Popularity
With all of the above considered, this is how Canadian sports teams rank in terms of popularity:
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Toronto Maple Leafs
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Toronto Raptors
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Toronto Blue Jays
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Montréal Canadiens
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Edmonton Oilers
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Vancouver Canucks
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Winnipeg Jets
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Calgary Flames
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Winnipeg Blue Bombers
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Toronto FC
*Credit for all images in this article belongs to AP Photo*
