Baseball Comes In Second As America’s Favorite Sport
February 9th, 2008 · by Bob Meyer · 1 CommentFootball is the most popular sport in America. Rochester, N.Y.-based Harris Interactive says the popularity of major sports is unchanged, since last year.
Harris last month polled 2,302 adults–of whom 1,562 follow one or more sport–and found that 30% of the latter say professional football is their favorite. Second place goes to baseball, with 15% saying it is their favorite sport. College football is third, with 12%, and 10% of sports enthusiasts say auto racing is their favorite.
Both men’s professional and college basketball have seen an overall 2% drop among respondents since 1985. The new survey pegs pro basketball’s popularity at 4% among respondents.
The firm says that professional football has been the most popular sport in the U.S., at least since it started the study. And the game’s popularity has actually risen. When Harris started the poll, only 24% of respondents who follow a sport or two said pro football was their favorite sport versus today’s 30%.
Baseball, however, has dropped 8 percentage points, from 23% in popularity in the survey; men’s tennis has also dropped 4 percentage points, from 5% to 1%.
Not surprising to anyone who has followed Nascar’s rise in recent years, auto racing has also increased its popularity by five percentage points, from 5% in 1985. Also up is hockey–by 3 percentage points, to 5%.
When Harris crunched the numbers by income and other demographic variables, the firm found that most people who liked pro football belong to households making $50,000 to under $75,000; the game is most popular among those ages 25-29, and 65 and older; and among people who live on the East Coast.
Per the survey, Hispanics and those with a post graduate education are least likely to call football their favorite sport.
Baseball fans, like those who favor pro football, tend to be East Coasters. The game is also most popular among thirtysomethings. Those ages 65 and older are least likely to say baseball is their favorite sport.
In the Harris survey, college football is particularly popular among those with a college degree and Southerners. Just 3% of Easterners said college football was their favorite sport.
Auto racing skewed favorably toward consumers aged 30-39, Southerners and Conservatives, while it fares worst among Hispanics, and those ages 18-24.
This entry was posted on Saturday, February 9th, 2008 at 4:59 am and is filed under Professional Athletics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
February 20th, 2008 at 10:59 pm
Consider that the US population has grown solely through immigration, not birth rates; and that immigrants bring with them cultures that include spectator sports enthusiasm. A good friend of mine who grew up in Czech under the communist regime and entered the US in the late eighties has come to love American Football.
Both he and his wife were top athletes in their native land where there was no exposure to American football. Here in America, his daughter was prized for her basketball abilities in high school and her parents couldn’t understand that sport– which was not popular in Czech. But come Sunday afternoon in the latter part of the year, you’re bound to find my Czech friend tuned into a football game.
The point is, it might not be a reflection of the quality of MLB, the NFL or NBA, or even NASCAR. Rankings of sports by popularity might be more a reflection on demographics and the changes in the demographics–not the changes in the sport, how it’s managed, its image, or the PR surrounding it.