Immigration: General Social Survey

Greater Toronto Area Dept: Cricket is hugely popular today among the growing population of Canadians of South Asian background. Table tennis, China’s national game, is exploding in Toronto’s suburbs. And then there is kabaddi, an Indian village game that through the power of nostalgia and the financial muscle of Indian immigrants is now more vibrant in Canada than it is in India, according to Globe And Mail. That may be a result of their efforts to establish themselves financially in a new country, as income has a profound effect on participation. People with family incomes above $80,000 a year are twice as likely to participate in sport as those with incomes under $30,000 and as the Greater Toronto Area absorbs hundreds of thousands of immigrants from South Asia and China, Toronto’s sports scene has a lot of other balls in the air. For the moment, they are niche sports – and kabaddi is more significant as a spectator event than participation sport – but demographics are on their side. Their impact won’t be immediate or earth-shattering : table tennis won’t regularly fill the Rogers Centre any time soon, and playing fields won’t be re-painted with kabaddi boundaries. According to the Statistics Canada General Social Survey, immigrants are less likely to play sports than the Canadian-born. As reported in the news.
@t niche sports, spectator event