Survey on Vancouver NBA expansion finds more than half of B.C. residents harbouring hoop dreams
Most British Columbians think bringing an NBA team back to Vancouver would be a "good idea," though far fewer say they'd be likely to attend games.
These are some of the findings of a recent poll of B.C. residents conducted by Research Co. on the prospect of bringing NBA basketball back to the province's largest city.
Nearly one-quarter (23 per cent) of the online survey's 800 respondents said they went to at least one Vancouver Grizzlies game between 1995 and 2001, before the team relocated to Memphis, Tenn.
Since the Grizzlies' departure, basketball fandom has remained relatively strong in B.C., according to the poll. Forty-one per cent of respondents reported having a favourite NBA team, with most of those – 25 per cent of the sample overall – choosing the Toronto Raptors.
Notably, more than two-thirds of those who currently have a favourite team said they would be "very" (32 per cent) or "somewhat" (36 per cent) likely to switch allegiances if Vancouver got a new NBA franchise.
And even non-fans are on board with the prospect of bringing a new team to Vancouver, according to the poll.
A total of 59 per cent of British Columbians surveyed said it would be a "good idea" (37 per cent) or a "very good idea" (22 per cent) to have an NBA team in Vancouver.
Fewer than one in 10 took the opposite perspective, saying a new team would be a "bad" (four per cent) or "very bad" (two per cent) idea. The rest (34 per cent) were unsure.
While this suggests a broad base of support for bringing the NBA back to B.C., the number of people saying they'd actually attend games is significantly smaller.
One in five (20 per cent) said they'd be "very likely" to attend at least one home game per year for a hypothetical new Vancouver team. Another quarter (25 per cent) said they'd be "somewhat likely" to do so.
The number saying they'd be season tickets is even smaller, with six per cent of those surveyed saying they'd be "very likely" to do so.
Still, based on population data from the 2021 census, if even one per cent of adults in Metro Vancouver purchased season tickets for a hypothetical new NBA team, that would be enough to sell out Rogers Arena for every home game.
Research Co. conducted its poll from Dec. 8 to 10 among 800 adults in British Columbia. The results have been statistically weighted to reflect census figures for age, gender and region within the province.
The company says the poll's margin of error is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
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