Do you seriously think that Apex has a smaller player base than this game?

Not that I think of it as that, but it is factual that the Apex player base is smaller than Overwatch 2. If you look at the statistics provided on various websites or just google it, you can see that about 2-3 million players log into Overwatch a day whereas only about 500-600k people log into Apex.

This is why you can see a plethora of players that use a Smurf account in Apex as there aren't many high-ranking active players to fill a lobby.