Well, except for 11 there...
Posted on 03/05/2026 12:09:05 AM PST by Az Joe
The popularity of sports worldwide has grown rapidly due to the consistent increase in television rights.
With roughly 8 billion people worldwide, it’s very difficult to map which are the most popular—for example, table tennis is most popular in Asia, while the NFL’s following is predominantly based in the U.S.
I actually got into The Ashes, between England and Australia, that was some riveting stuff.
True
They could change American football so that if the game ends in a tie, they would kick for field goals like soccer shootouts. No player kicks twice.
Or do like college and have 2-Pt conversions until there is a winner.
Assume the know the history of “The Ashes” :)
Well, except for 11 there...
I read that the most popular spectator sport in the US is auto racing, followed by horse racing, if that counts as a sport.
Looks like my info was created by AI and I could not verify its authenticity so I requested it be deleted.
FIH (governing body of the sport) requires artificial turf fields dictated by the FIH. Hard to have multipurpose fields when FIH turf is different from other turf.
The Atlanta Olympics FIH field hockey stadium was at Clark Atlanta University, which now has red artificial turf for NCAA Division II gridiron. Women’s FIH is prominent in North Carolina — former NASCAR O’Reilly Series race winner and Virginia Republican politician of Emporia Hermie Sadler was an equipment manager for the sport.
FIH confused Steve Harvey, as seen in this video from Family Feud Africa:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tsMdwrTo1M
Field hockey used to have the same obnoxious offside rule as soccer. They got rid of it about 20 years ago and the game opened up some, but most importantly just got a rid a rule nobody really understood or liked. Soccer remains mired in tradition and refuses to get rid of it.
The rest of the world build tons of stadiums. There’s 92 soccer teams in England above the “professional” line (though people are still getting paid enough to not need other jobs 2 or 3 more leagues down the pyramid). There’s generally enough stadium capacity in city/town/village for about 20% of the population. English cities are notorious ghost towns if all the local soccer teams are playing at the same time. I’ve joked with a British ex-pat friend that where we have “2 stop light” towns they have “2 soccer team” towns.
And most of the rest of the world follows a similar path to England. Tons of teams, tons of stadiums, very few what we would consider big stadiums, but if you add up the stadium capacity in a city it’s a good chunk of the population.
Games like cricket and field hockey are so popular in many countries because they were once all part of the British empire.
I see you are a Man of Culture.
Most major non-U.S. cities have very large soccer stadiums. And a big cricket match in India will have at TV audience in excess of 1 billion viewers.
With so many games there’s less at stake in each game and less reason to watch any particular game — apart from the playoffs and World Series. But in any case, the US and the other countries where baseball is popular aren’t a large part of the world’s population compared the countries where soccer is popular.
1. Soccer
Fans: 3.5 billion
With 3.5 billion fans worldwide, soccer is the sport that almost everyone agrees is the most viewed sport in the world. That soccer, never could understand that. Anything a 5 year old can do ain’t a sport. Marcus
Men play field hockey?
It is played in every decent school in New England by girls.
The rugged girls shone there.
Are you talking about it being on TV or live at the venue? I don’t think I’d like to see a soccer match either way. I don’t understand why the smaller bars have their TVs always tuned (not necessarily live) to soccer as their default channel, and why, even if you ask them nicely, they won’t change it just to see what else might be on. Probably because soccer is so international and “PC”, so nobody can whine about it being too American. That’s where I’ll sit and have just one, and then either stop in somewhere else or head home.
It is a VERY different game when played by men.
If you are familiar with lacrosse, it is kind of like the difference between men’s and women’s lacrosse. The men’s game is brutal in comparison.
(Not that you are going to go search for a game, but in New England find a community with a Caribbean Community, and you can find a game most Saturdays in the fall. I saw a bunch of guys from the Bahamas playing Jamaicans. It was fun to watch.)
Up here brutal is rugby. The local women’s rugby team was really rugged and won nationals one year. The women’s ice hockey was funny to watch....
funny like on day I was in my car behind a very masculinized lesbian that I knew from the coop. She wore a lot of leather chains tats etc. She was on her hog with her girlfriend. The light turned green. You never saw such a demure, gentle, sweet, slow ride. you would have thought she was driving a Volvo.
Honestly.
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