Last month, 127 NV students took a poll on what their favorite sport to attend is. The question did not just apply to NV sports, but to sports in general. The sports you could choose from included football, basketball, baseball, soccer, and golf, but the results were extremely surprising.
Out of the 127 students that answered, 42.5% of them said their favorite sport to attend was football, which is a ridiculously high number. That number would be surprising for some people and not so much for others, but the reason why it would be surprising is because the NFL had 10% less viewers this year than from the previous year, although football winning the most votes overall isn’t a surprise. However, football isn’t the only sport that’s not gaining attention, but losing it instead.
Baseball is losing viewers at a faster rate than any other sport. Just 5.5% of the students that took the poll said they would choose to attend a Major League Baseball game, while just 9% of the U.S population actually does. The MLB also saw its attendance drop below 70 million for the first time since 2003. This is surely due to the fact that games are getting longer and longer. Last season, Major League Baseball games took an average of three hours and five minutes to complete from start to finish. That is 4 ½ minutes longer than the game average from the season before. If the MLB doesn’t figure out a way to speed things up, expect the amount of viewers to keep decreasing.
Probably the biggest surprise from the NV voters, was that 21.3% of the students chose soccer. The world’s most famous sport is officially famous in the U.S. The sport that people used to consider boring because there is not enough action, scoring, and more, is now making a huge jump and is expected to pass baseball in the next few years.
Not surprisingly though, basketball received 27.6% of the votes from NV, making it the second most popular sport to watch at NV and in the U.S. With the excitement brought by March Madness, the NBA Finals, and more, basketball will always be one of America’s favorite sports to watch.
Finally, there’s golf, and you already know what to expect, which is a really low number. Just 3.1% of the students that answered the poll, said golf would be their favorite sport to attend, and only 0.5% of the U.S says golf is their favorite sport, which means golf cut it very close this year with women’s basketball, which is a whole other issue. One of the biggest golf tournaments of the year is the U.S Open, and just 5.1 million people watched the event take place. That means roughly 15 out of every 1,000 people watched one of the biggest golf tournaments of the season.
With all of that being said, expect football to be America’s favorite sport forever. It has 37% of the U.S saying that it is their favorite sport, which is more than basketball, baseball, soccer, and hockey combined. Football might not be your favorite sport, but know this; football leads the charge for American sports, and it always will.
