Those stats are just PvE Helo matches, doesn’t count use of Helos in ground RB (ground arcade helos and aircraft are counted in stats against the ground vehicle you spawned them from). Factor that in and the “helo playerbase” would approach naval even more closely.
Replays could be an undercount, but there’s no reason to believe they are in naval significantly more than other modes at present. There was a problem in the past with some low-tier bluewater RB matches being misfiled in the “newbie mode” section, but we’re not talking a large amount there compared to the total number of naval replays.
I don’t think until Statshark came along this year that people realized that the two naval modes combined were, at best, about 1%-1.5% of this game, a little better than Helo PvE, but worse than PvE Air Assault or PvE Ground Assault, even taken together.
EDIT: Note the troll, who lied about the 50% increase in players post-Leviathans, who lied about no changes to naval in the last two years, is also lying in the post below, as he does continuously when it comes to defending his bizarre Naval AB fixation in this thread and others. The correct number to compare there is spawns, because you can spawn over and over in helo PvE in the same vehicle, unlike naval. The top helo, with 67,000 PvE spawns last month, isn’t that far off the top AB ship (Litchfield), with 224,571 spawns in the same month. Saying the two are “nowhere close” in terms of popularity is, in fact, an overstatement… especially when you consider how long you have to invest to get into helos vs how fast you can play your first naval game. In February, it was even closer, with 84k Ka-50 spawns vs 155k Litchfields.