The Great Canadian Ratings Report: Raptors keep on rolling

While the Toronto Raptors marketing slogan "We The North" leaves something to be desired in either punctuation or grammar, there is evidence it may be working. (Shouldn't it be "We, The North" or "We Are The North"?)

Regardless, the team's victory over the Brooklyn Nets on Sunday drew an average of 885,000 viewers, making it the second most-watched basketball game in Canadian history. The only broadcast to surpass it was Game 7 of the NBA Eastern Conference semifinal in 2001, which averaged 916,000 viewers.

Now that 2001 rating rode the wave of Vince Carter's Vinsanity and was based on a ratings system that likely under-reported the actual number of viewers. Since the new system came in five years ago, ratings have risen about 20 per cent for sports -- so the 2001 audience probably would have topped 1 million had the current system been in place.

But taking all of that into account, Sunday's audience is an impressive number. It even beat out some NHL playoff games nationally, something that happens only slightly more often than Rob Ford tells the truth.

Even more promising is the fact that Sunday's game was the most-watched sports broadcast of the week in the Greater Toronto Area, delivering more viewers than any hockey game.

While the Raptors' playoff ratings success isn't quite in the same league as the NHL, CFL or NFL playoff audiences, it represents a huge increase over the team's regular-season numbers. In fact, if you take the team's best performance -- 210,000 average on TSN -- its audience has more than quadrupled during these playoffs. And that number should rise the longer the series goes.

The good news for the Raptors is that no matter what happens, there are obviously an awful lot of people who are getting their first serious look at the team. Assuming they like what they see -- numbers have risen game by game through the playoffs -- many are likely to come back next season.

For a team that has struggled to find a television following, that's nothing but good news.

Here are the most-watched sports events on English-language television during the past week, according to BBM Canada overnight ratings.

* - NBC audience not calculated.

THREE TO WATCH

Crunch time in Europe: The second leg of the Champions League semifinals goes this week with four teams fighting to reach the final. Real Madrid and Bayern Munich meet on Tuesday (2:30 p.m. ET, most Sportsnet channels) while Atletico Madrid and Chelsea square off Wednesday (2:30 p.m. ET, Sportsnet.)

Raptor rapture?: Those plucky Raptors continue trying to defy the predictions and turn Canada into a basketball hotbed as they host the Brooklyn Nets in Game 5 of the NBA first playoff round. Wednesday, 7:30 p.m. ET, TSN.

Horsing around: The purported sport of kings -- what's royalty got against hockey? -- has one of its premier events on Saturday with the 140th running of the Kentucky Derby. The race barely lasts two minutes, but NBC always manages to make a pretty interesting 90-minute show out of it. Warning: there may be references to gambling. Saturday, 4 p.m. ET, NBC/TSN.