According to Sports Illustrated, in a recent Gallup poll, 23% of Americans described themselves as hockey fans. This puts hockey 10th among the eleven sports in the survey--ahead of pro wrestling but behind figure skating.

I think most of that 23% contributes to threads in this board! wink

~Adam

You got it Adam. wink

They shouldn't even count pro wrestling as a sport. It's theater. Other than that, it just proves that hockey is in a sad state.

Yeah, and I fear the longer we go without the sport of hockey the lower the poll numbers are going to be here in the US who say they are hockey fans too. frown

Actually, I was surprised by that 23% figure; I thought it would be considerably lower. That would translate into roughly 68 million hockey fans in the US! I wonder what all of these 'hockey fans' were doing last season during the NHL playoffs? :confused: If I recall correctly, even the Stanley Cup finals attracted only an average of about two or three million viewers per game in the United States.

I was curious about the other sports in the poll that Adam mentioned, so here is the break-down in fan support for various sports in the US. I was a bit surprised to see that college football out-ranked major league baseball, and that figure skating ranked as high as it did (well, at least one 'ice' sport made it to the top five!)


1. Professional football 64 %
2. College football 54%
3. Professional baseball 52%
4. College basketball 41%
5. Figure skating 41%
6. Professional basketball 38%
7. Auto racing 30%
8. Professional golf 30%
9. Professional tennis 24%
10.Professional ice hockey 23%
11.Professional wrestling 10%

I was interested to see whether the above list mirrors the popularity of the various sports on the Outsports discussion board. I realize the following isn't a truly accurate comparison because it ranks the sports in terms of the number of posts rather than the number of fans, but for what it's worth, the top eight sports on Outsports are:

1. Professional baseball
2. Professional football
3. Tennis
4. College football
5. Hockey (congratulations, guys! )
6. Professional basketball
7. College Basketball
8. Soccer (well behind the others)

I didn't count 'Olympics' because of the multitude of individual sports and the fact that we only have Olympic Games every two years. One has to look in the 'Other Sports' section to find a small smattering of sports, including my popular Bobsledding thread. I was surprised that golf and auto-racing, both prominent in the national survey, don't seem to have much of a following on Outsports, from what I can see.

[ December 28, 2004, 09:25 AM: Message edited by: Marc ]

I'm not surprised about golf at all. I have pretty good gaydar and when I was playing tournaments it NEVER went off. Gay men are pretty much nonexistent in the upper echelons of the game. Lesbians, on the other hand...

Marc thanks for your hard work on the compilations and for your post in general. Very interesting. Now go to some Hitmen games boy!!!! wink

Marc, I was also surprised that the number was so high--they probably got a lot of responses from Detroit (Hockey Town) wink Respondents could identify themselves as fans of as many different sports as they wanted, so, clearly there was a lot of overlap & obviously the rabidness of support differs for each of an individuals' chosen sports. This way, folks who may watch an occasional game or read an account in the sports section but don't follow it beyond that level, can identify themselves as hockey fans, inflating the sports' popularity. I think it would be interesting to see results if the question were "rate your favorite sports, 1-10, with one being the sport you follow most closely..."

~Adam