Day 34 – Popularity

Topic Point: It has long been acknowledged that soccer is the most popular sportin the world with current estimates citing 3.5-4 billion followers. There are ahandful of countries around the world that do not claim soccer to be thefavorite sport. In Australia and south Asian countries it is cricket; in Canadait is ice hockey; in the United States it is football followed by basketball.Interestingly, the second most popular sport in the world is cricket, with 2.5billion fans. Basketball ranks third with fan popularity estimated between 500million and 2 billion.

For the 2022 FIFA Men’s World Cup Final,global viewership was 1.5 billion viewers. The 2023 FIFA Women’s World CupFinal had 222 million viewers globally. The 2023 Men’s Cricket World Cup Finalhad 300 million viewers. The estimate for the 2025 Super Bowl is somewherebetween 150-200 million viewers globally, with 130 million being American.[1]Bad Bunny’s 2026 halftime show had an estimated 4 billion viewers over socialmedia, with 128 million US viewers. By contrast, the 2026 Super Bowl averaged125.6 million American viewers.  

The 2024 Olympics had 5 billion viewersover the 2 week span with an average of 32 million viewers per day; swimming,gymnastics, and track & field were most popular with 80 million globalviewers.

Ted Lasso: Thepopularity of soccer is perhaps best reflected in the game day scenes at thepub or the stadium. There is an atmosphere that resembles college football!

Soccer-related note: In January 2026, soccer surpassed baseball in the Americanpopularity rankings and took 3rd position. American football is the mostpopular with 36% of Americans saying it is their favorite sport; basketball issecond with 17% of American’s declaring it their favorite followed by soccerwith 10% of Americans. Baseball fell to fourth with 9% of Americans saying itis their favorite sport.[2]

American Sports comparison: As mentioned above, the Super Bowl has approximately 150-200 millionviewers, and is the most watched television event in the United States (atapproximately 140 million). The 2022 FIFA men’s World Cup had 26 millionviewers in the United States.

The 2025 World Series game 7 was the mostwatched baseball game globally in history. It drew 51 million viewers with 31million in the U.S. Average viewership in the United States was 16 million overthe 7-game series.

The NBA finals averaged 10 million viewersper game with a total of 75 million people watching at least a portion of theNBA Finals. Global viewership is difficult to assess due to time differences;most  global viewership is throughdigital highlights.

The US men played in the gold medalbasketball game in 2024 and had 19.5 million viewers.

[1] Mozarsky, Jake. How many people watch the Super Bowl? ExplainingSuper Bowl TV ratings in USA, around the World. The Sporting News via YahooSports!, Feb 5, 2026.

[2] FoxSports.com, Soccer reportedly overtakes baseball in the U.S. asAmerica’s third favorite sport. Jan 7, 2026.

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Interactive

Below you can see a table and a graph depicting the popularity of various events in the United States and around the world.

From the table, a few noteworthy points may be drawn.

• The 2023 Women’s World Cup Final between England and Spain drew more of the world’s attention than any Super Bowl  (adjusted for non-US viewers for both events)

• The Cricket World Cup draws more of the world’s attention than the Super Bowl (adjusted for non-US viewers for both events).

• In the United States, more people watched the 2026 Bad Bunny Halftime show than the game itself.

• The 2026 Super Bowl drew a surprising number of non-US viewers compared to previous years. This most likely has is a result of the halftime show featuring Bad Bunny, as is demonstrated in world views of the Bad Bunny performance.

• NBA basketball is not included because of time differences around the world and data indicating that most non-US viewers watch highlights of the games than full game video. However, information available suggests the results will be similar to baseball.

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For the graph above, the viewership along the y-axis is stopped at 1 billion so the scale reflects the smaller numbers better (refer to chart above for exact numbers). Notice that the 2025 Super Bowl has minimal global viewership. Previous Super Bowls were similar and the 2026 Super Bowl with 94 million non-US viewers is an outlier, most likely due to interest in the halftime show itself.

You may also notice that while U.S. viewership of the men’s and women’s World Cup and the cricket World Cup are small, the total viewership around the world of these events is higher than the Super Bowl viewership, even when US viewership is included. The chart and graph clearly demonstrate American football’s popularity in one space – the United States. While our culture stops to watch and celebrate, the rest of the world does not care. And when soccer or cricket (or a world-renowned artist) are on the stage, the world does care (even if the United States does not).