The US sports market is truly huge. We estimate that as of 2021, the North American sports market had a dollar value of nearly $75 billion dollars (USD).
That number includes ticket sales, gate revenue, sponsorships, media rights and a wide range of merchandise.
Luckily for sports fans, there are a lot of different sports to chose from…but which sport is number one, the most popular, the one that receives the most attention, has the most fans and revenue?
As the chart below shows, football received the largest number of votes (33%), while basketball came in at number two, with 25% of the vote.
MMA (mixed martial arts) captured the third sport, with a 17% share, while soccer came in at 14%, baseball at 11% and boxing at 1%.
Note that when we asked the question that generated the above chart, we asked respondents to select their single favorite sport – that is, they could only select one sport from the list, and so the true, total popularity of a sport is not necessarily reflected above.
in fact, we know it’s not – for example, MMA and boxing have tremendous cross-appeal, as do most of the other sports listed above.
Even so, this is a telling chart as it demonstrates each sport’s relative strength among core fans. For example, if people could only pick one sport, they’d most likely pick football, whereas boxing is much more of a niche sport in this sense.
Good stuff! Till next time.