And yet, everyone of those people you mention watches the European leagues and not domestic ones. You're following a European team by being here.
Football in Europe, the core of the sport, has been almost like a dead sport for roughly 10 years now. What you see on television from some CL nights is an illusion or some hopeful glimpses from the past in league games, that will unfortunately never really come true again. It's a dead sport.
There's a reason why this is happening. The target is the young kids from the Americas, Africa and Asia. The ones that never had this feeling that Europeans grew up with and they want to replace it with this "experience". The FIFA ultimate team come to reality, the "elite", getting kids to watch the same teams over and over again in order to get more familiarized with them, having no "shitty" teams or players around, so that you know all the important players and teams and make it easier to market.
They're capitalizing the fact that the sport is growing in some parts of the North Americas, some parts of central/western/eastern Africa, some parts of Asia, acknowledging that they've already pretty much killed the sport in Europe. There's nothing left for them in Europe to squeeze. Apart from squeezing fans from areas who'd not actively support a foreign club, but now it becomes their main club since their local club cannot amount to shit due to UEFA and the greed of pretty much half of the "Dirty Dozen".
In Europe it has nothing to with having the same food, it's corruption, the flow of money that eliminates competition, betting and lack of faith in the federations that has led to this. In Canada I'm not sure why hockey is declining, probably there's less ice around