Canada’s team still wears blue

Are Canadian sports fans uniting behind the Toronto Raptors for their second-round NBA postseason series against the Cleveland Cavaliers? Are they putting aside NHL rivalries to support the Winnipeg Jets, the only Canadian team remaining in the Stanley Cup playoffs?

According to data from Google and Twitter, the answer on both counts is no. Instead, it’s the Toronto Blue Jays that have piqued the curiosity of most Canadian sports fans.

In the past 30 days, the Raptors have had the most searches on Google, the internet’s most popular search engine. But the Toronto-based team had the majority of those searches coming from Ontario. Similarly, fans searching for information on the Jets have been predominantly based in Manitoba and Nunavut.

The Blue Jays, who started their season on March 29 and got off to a hot start in the American League East, have had fewer searches in total than the Raptors, but draw on a broader geographic base. The Jays are the most-searched team in Nova Scotia, Quebec, Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Columbia, Northwest Territories and Yukon.

Stats from Twitter back that up. Although the Raptors were the most tweeted-about sports team in Canada between April 1 and May 2, 86 per cent were from users in Ontario.

The Jets garnered broader interest across Canada than the Raptors on Twitter, with 57 per cent of tweets emanating from Manitoba, 22 per cent from Ontario, 11 per cent from Alberta and five per cent from B.C. But in terms of cumulative numbers, the Maple Leafs and Blue Jays had more people tweeting than Winnipeg ’s NHL team.

It’s also worth noting just because someone tweets about a team or searches for them, doesn’t mean they’re supporting them.