Soccer is extremely popular in Canada, despite its reputation as a hockey nation. In fact, according the Canadian Soccer Association's 2007 demographic report released last week, soccer is still the nation's number one participatory sport with over 850,000 registered players.
If there was a way to gauge the amount of "non-registered" players (casual players), the popularity of soccer in Canada would be even more pronounced.
Soccer (or football, as it is known almost everywhere in the world) is the "beautiful game" and the most popular sport in the world. Is there truly a more global competition than the World Cup, held every four years?
Soccer is a sport that doesn't cost a lot of money to play. Expensive equipment isn't required, and all you really need is a ball and an open space that could be grass, sand, or cement. Even shoes are optional. How does that compare with hockey and its expensive hockey equipment and ice time?
In the demographic report, the overwhelming majority of registered players are youth under the age of 18 (84 percent).
The overall participation in Canada is 58 percent male and 42 percent female. But the interest in soccer among females is not just a youth phenomenon. At the senior level (over the age of 18), female participation declines only slightly to 39 percent.
Ontario makes up the vast majority of registrants at 44 percent. A distant second is Quebec at 19 percent, while British Columbia is third at 14 percent.
Although soccer's popularity cannot be questioned, the growth rate of registered players has slowed to be less than two percent per year for the last four years. Soccer experienced rapid growth (as measured by number of players registered) in the mid-90s just after the World Cup was held in the U.S. in 1994. Similarly, female registration spiked in 2003 when the women's World Cup was held in the U.S.
One would expect to see a spike in soccer participation based on the overwhelming success Canada enjoyed as hosts of the FIFA U-20 World Cup last summer.
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