Hockey tops the ratings and it's still October

There's an old saying in the Canadian television world that goes something like this: Hockey is Canada's most popular sport. Everything else is tied for second.

While that may be a bit of an overstatement, the weekend TV ratings pretty much back that up. Not even a month into the NHL season, hockey ratings are almost doubling the next highest. Imagine what they'll be doing when the games start to actually mean something.

Saturday's NHL tripleheader on CBC averaged 2.3 million viewers, 1.1 million more than the runner-up.

The tie for second place may be down to two, though. The CFL took second place as an overtime Lions-Roughriders game topped the 1 million mark. CTV's NFL offerings on Sunday were close behind at 899,000 while the Rogers NFL Sunday combination (City and Sportsnet) pulled in 792,000.

As always, here are the top weekend audiences for sports broadcasts on English-language networks, as supplied by BBM overnight ratings:

1. NHL, Leafs at Canucks/Rangers at Habs/Bruins at Sens, Saturday, CBC: 2,306,000

2. CFL: Lions at Roughriders, Saturday, TSN: 1,202,000

3. NHL: Oilers at Flames, Saturday, CBC: 1,119,000

4. NFL: Early games, Sunday, CTV: 899,000

5. CFL: Eskimos at Stampeders, Friday, TSN: 714,000

6. CFL: Ticats at Argonauts, Friday, TSN: 706,000

7. CFL: Alouettes at Blue Bombers, Saturday, TSN: 637,000

8. NFL: Eagles at Redkins, Monday, TSN: 592,000

9. MLB: Angels at Yankees, Sunday, Sportsnet: 530,000*

10. NHL, Hockey Night In Canada pre-game, Saturday, CBC: 507,000

11. NFL: Late games, Sunday, Citytv: 492,000

12. Curling: Grand Slam quarterfinal, Saturday, CBC: 483,000

13. Curling: Grand Slam final, Sunday, CBC: 441,000

14. NFL: Cardinals at Giants, Sunday, TSN: 411,000**

15. NFL: Late games, Sunday, Sportsnet: 303,000

* Two Sportsnet channels only, Fox viewers not calculated

** NBC audience not calculated

Comments

[Mike]

Chris, there's a little bit of a discrepancy between the numbers you're posting and what I saw on Bill Brioux's TV blog. (ie. he posted the Lions/Riders game at 1.165M and you have it at 1.202M and CityTV had 432,000 instead of 492,000) Generally, some of his numbers are lower than what you have. It's not off significantly but if you're both getting the numbers from BBM, why are they different at all?