Rugby Union is more popular than Soccer in Australia!!!!!!
The average crowd of Super Rugby Games is superior than average crowd of Soccer Games in Australia and the maximum crowd at the main Australian Stadium is also for Super Rugby games.
The soccer season is longer than the Super Rugby, so have a higher total but the same thing happens in the USA, where baseball has more crowd because the MLB season is longer than the NFL season. But the average NFL crowd is higher than the MLB crowd, which is more important.
You make some great points Conrad and my comment is more directed at these popularity debates(especially ranking the sports in order).
In 2012, 70,859,268 bums were planted inside MLB seats during the regular season, not counting playoffs. It's a MASSIVE figure, the next highest league is the Japanese Baseball league at 21,679,596(though that's a number I see is from 2010). Chuck in a few other leagues like Korea's at 7.1 million or so...AAA baseball(2nd division baseball essentially for those not in the baseball know) at over 13.2 million, even AA baseball(3rd division) along with the Mexican league manage to get over 11 million fans combined despite averages of less than 5,000 per game. Baseball could very well be the most "attended" sport even over Association football.
That's what makes these popularity arguments so subjective.
What do we base it on? Participation numbers? Feic used those for Soccer in Ireland but by that token it would be the most popular everywhere(maybe a couple of exceptions like Tonga, Samoa but these would be extremely limited) in the world even in Canada, despite the fact that I know Canadians who love to play the game but would rather rip their eyes out than watch it or played it until they were 14 for exercise and have had nothing to do wiith it since. Likewise Canada has pretty solid rugby participation levels but aside from National Team games the only channel that shows rugby is a premium channel and the sport gets very little exposure nor does it get many people out to the stands.
Do we go by TV numbers? Lots of people watched Mayweather vs. Marquez last weekend, but how many active boxers do people know in there circle of friends or have been to a fight recently?(And don't include the guy who's "training" for boxing or MMA, got to get your ass in the ring to count).
Bums in seats? Well that might not take into account venue capacities, ticket prices(MLB tickets for cheap seats are often around or even less than ten dollars in North America).
These debates always settle into people cherry picking numbers, leaning towards one factor or another to defend their sport.
I could rank Canada's team sports as.....
1. Ice Hockey
2. Gridiron (CFL and NFL combined especially)
3. Baseball
4. Soccer
5. Basketball
6. Lacrosse(especially indoor)
7. Rugby(League is very niche here but is also growing)
8. Cricket
This would probably get a lot of debate with friends, especially 4 and 5 maybe even 6 and 7....heck someone might say Soccer is 1 with all the participation...and that dosen't even begin to rank the other plethora of sports...we could argue points until our head's exploded when it gets down to the bottom of the list. Than many would want to divide the Canadian and American codes of gridiron oh god...the possibility of a debate scares me even now!!
Field Hockey(really only known as a women's game here, though I'm sure there are men somewhere playing)
GAA and Aussie Rules(limited patches of expats)
Ringette(also mainly ladies)
Handball
Water Polo
Polo
Netball
Volleyball
I could go on and on and that's just team sports....god knows where solo or pairs sports would fit in. I'm sure Tennis and Golf would be fairly high.
