It seems like the Raptors are everywhere these days. Thanks to a scorching 12-2 start, an exciting young team, the wildly successful "We The North" marketing campaign, and the crossover of animosity directed at the Leafs (supporting a team owned by the same management group instead, that'll show those MLSE bigwigs!), it seems that everyone in Toronto is talking about the Raptors. Raptors hats on the streets, Raptors talk on your Twitter timeline, drunken debates at bars over Lou Williams' usage replacing the old debates about James Reimer.


At least until they start losing (although right now it kind of looks like they'll never lose a game again?), they're the toast of Toronto.

This past Saturday, it sure seemed like everyone I knew was tuning out of the Leafs game on Hockey Night In Canada, and tuning in to the on-fire Raptors as they won handily over LeBron and the Cavs in front of a surprisingly large contingent of Raptors fans in Cleveland.


Now, I know that living in Toronto can present a bit of a skewed view of larger Canadian matters, but it wasn't until I saw the TV ratings that I realized that in fact, outside of my bubble of hip young latte-sipping Torontonians, no one else was watching.

Down below, I made a chart based on Numeris' Canadian TV ratings for this past weekend. Even though the Saturday night Raptors game was seemingly unavoidable if you were just on Twitter, they didn't even manage to make a dent in the CBC's Hockey Night In Canada ratings (nearly 2 million more people tuned in to watch Leafs-Red Wings as they did Raptors-Cavs.) Not only that, but a game featuring the league-leading Raptors taking on the NBA's most popular star managed to be outwatched by not one, but two different basic-cable curling tournament broadcasts last weekend.


To an American looking at this chart, it must seem like the most Canadian thing ever. Naturally, a sizable percentage of the entire population of Canada would tune in for a middling Leafs game in November. And naturally, the CFL playoffs would get gangbuster numbers. And even the pre-game show for Hockey Night In Canada, featuring a bunch of mulleted kids reading cue cards and a half hour of George Stroumboulopoulos and PJ Stock gesturing at videoboards, would be more watched than any NFL or NBA game. Naturally.


But the biggest indignity for the Raptors must be that the most important game of their season so far, in what might be the most promising season in franchise history, drew less eyeballs than a Grand Slam curling tournament in Thunder Bay that saw Mike McEwen defeat Brad Jacobs in the finals. (It was a good match, to be fair!)

Now, maybe it's not fair to single out the Saturday Raptors game, since it was up against the behemoth that was CBC hockey. But their Friday night game against the Bucks had zero sports competition on any of the major networks, and had barely more viewers, pretty much dead flat with curling from Saturday/Sunday afternoon. And this is with the added boost of the Raps being the #1 team in the East - these viewership numbers are up big from previous seasons, but still represent a small fish in a big Canadian TV pond.


For all the billboards and hype and We The North hoodies sold in Toronto, the rest of Canada is still a very different sports market. And it will still be a long, uphill climb before the Raptors get mainstream popularity in a country that would overwhelmingly rather watch curling, the CFL, and hockey pre-game shows.