Sport plays an important role in our lives. From the earliest years of childhood when we take sports very seriously until the last years of life. Check out the top 10 most popular sports ranked in the world.
We consider it a hobby, a fitness ritual, and sometimes even a profession. People are passionate about sports.
They take their sports heroes as role models and often have an emotional attachment. People in different regions of the world have different favorite sports. This makes classifying sports quite a challenging and difficult job.
Take a look at the 10 most popular sports in the world.
Sport Classification Criteria
We have used these criteria to ensure that we can determine the popularity of different sports.
The criteria include:
- Fan base and global audience
- TV audience
- TV rights offers
- Internet popularity
- Presence in Social Networks
- The number of professional leagues in the world
- Average salary of athletes in the best leagues
- Sponsorship offers
- Number of countries where the sport is popular
- increased competition
- Relevance throughout the year
- Gender equality
- Access to the general public
- Number of amateur players in the world
- The prominence of sport in the sports headlines of the print and electronic media
Top 10 Most Popular Sports Ranked in the World
1. football
Soccer is a sport that is played between two teams of eleven players with a spherical ball. It is played by 250 million players in more than 200 countries, making it the most popular sport in the world.
The game is played on a rectangular field with a goal at each end. The object of the game is to score using any part of the body.
Goalkeepers are the only players who can touch the ball with their hands or arms. Around 3.5 billion follow soccer, representing almost half of the world’s population. The sport is enjoyed by fans in almost every region of the world.
2. cricket
Cricket is a game of bat and ball that is played between two teams of 11 players on a field. It is in the center of which is a rectangular field 22 yards long. The two competing teams take turns batting, attempting to score runs.
While one team is batting, the other team plays. Cricket has three different formats, namely Test, ODI, and T20.
Cricket is the most watched sport in the second most populous country in the world. India and its subcontinent, including Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. The West Indies, South Africa and Australia also watch cricket the most. Around 2.2 billion people around the world watched the 2015 Cricket World Cup on their televisions.
3. Basketball
Basketball is a sport played by two teams of five players on a rectangular court. The objective is to throw a ball through a high hoop mounted on a board at each end.
A team may score a field goal by throwing the ball through the basket during regular play. A field goal scores two points for the shooting team if a player touches or is closer to the basket than the three-point line, and three points if the player is behind the three-point line.
The sport enjoys a large television audience in the USA due to the NBA, the national basketball league of the USA It is the most popular league in the world and is watched and followed by millions of fans in the USA. US and outside the US years.
4. hockey
It is a family of sports in which two teams play against each other trying to maneuver a ball or puck towards the opponent’s goal using a hockey stick. In many areas, a sport typically field hockey or ice hockey is generally referred to as hockey.
Hockey is a family of sports, field hockey is the national game of Pakistan and India, while ice hockey is popular especially in Canada, the United States, and Latvia. The combined number of fans for both forms of hockey reaches around 2.2 billion.
Field hockey is a widely watched sport in the countries of Pakistan, India, Australia, the United Kingdom, Germany, Malaysia, and the Netherlands. Ice hockey has a large following in Canada and the United States. Both forms of hockey are major sporting events at the Olympics.
SEE ALSO: The 10 Oldest Goalkeepers In The NHL 2023
5. Tennis
Tennis is a sport that is usually played individually against a single opponent (singles) or between two teams of two players each (doubles).
Each player uses a racket that is tied with a string to hit a felt-covered hollow rubber ball over or around a net and into the opponent’s court. The object of the game is to play the ball in such a way that the opponent cannot play a good return.
Modern tennis superstars like Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic are widely known around the world and have hundreds of millions of fans around the world. While legends like Pete Sampras and Boris Becker still get a mention from our elders.
The main tennis competitions, the four Grand Slams, are watched by more than 400 million people around the world.
6. Volleyball
Volleyball is a team sport in which two teams of six players are separated by a net. Each team tries to score points by supporting a ball on the other team’s court under organized rules.
Volleyball is a team sport and has been part of the official program of the Summer Olympics since 1964. It enjoys a fan base of around 900 million people and is the sixth most popular sport in the world.
The sport has a huge following around the world, including countries like Brazil, Russia, Japan, China, the US, Italy, Cuba, and Poland.
7. Table tennis
Table tennis, also known as ping pong, is a sport in which two or four players hit a light ball from side to side with table tennis rackets. The game takes place on a hard table divided by a network.
Except for initial serve, players must allow a ball played toward them to bounce only on their side of the table and must return it to bounce on the opposite side.
Table tennis fans are spread all over the world. With millions of fans, amateur players and professional players, table tennis has a strong fan base of around 900 million people and is the seventh most popular sport in the world.
The sport is popular in almost every country in the world, but only as a hobby and as an amateur sport. There are only a few countries where the sport is popular on a professional level, such as China, Sweden, Japan, and South Korea.
8. Baseball
Baseball is a game of bat and ball played between two teams of nine players who take turns batting and fielding. The offense tries to score more runs than its opponent by hitting a ball thrown by the pitcher.
It is done with a bat and moving counterclockwise around a series of four bases: first, second, third and home. A run is scored when the runner advances around the bases and returns to the plate.
There are around 500 million baseball fans spread across the US, Japan, Cuba and the Dominican Republic, making it the eighth most popular sport in the world. The sport is widely seen in these countries, but the audience is not as good in other countries of the world.
9. rugby
Rugby is widely played in France and has a strong tradition among the people of the Basque, Occitan and Catalan areas along the border regions between Spain and France. The game is very popular in South Africa, as it was introduced by English-speaking settlers in the 19th century.
British settlers also brought the game to Australia and New Zealand, where it is widely played. From there it has spread to much of Polynesia, having particularly strong followers in Fiji, Samoa, and Tonga.
10 golf
Golf is a precision sport with clubs and balls in which competing players use many types of clubs to hit the balls through a series of holes on a course using the fewest number of strokes.
It is defined, in the rules of golf, as “playing a ball with a club from the teeing ground to the hole by means of a successive stroke or strokes in accordance with the Rules.”
The game is more popular with the elderly compared to the young, and most of these fans are concentrated in the US, Canada, and Europe. The sport enjoys high ratings among upper-class adult men.
