Baseball is known as “America’s favorite pastime.” But for most of the American public, football is “America’s sport,” according to a recent Pew Research Center survey.
In August 2023, we asked nearly 12,000 American adults the following question: “If you had to choose one sport as ‘America’s sport,’ even if you don’t follow it personally, what sport would it be?” ? The question was part of a broader investigation into sports fandom in the United States.
More than half of Americans (53%) say the American sport is football – about twice as many as baseball (27%). Much smaller proportions choose one of the four other sports we asked about: basketball (8%), soccer (3%), auto racing (3%), or hockey (1%). ).
We’ve also included the option for Americans to write in another sport. The most common answers given were golf, boxing, rodeo and ice skating. Other respondents took the opportunity to have some fun: Some of the more creative responses we received included “competitive eating,” “grievance politics,” “reality TV,” and “tipping the cows.”
Ahead of Super Bowl LVIII on February 11, the Pew Research Center conducted this analysis to find out which sport Americans consider to be the nation’s sport.
This analysis is based on a survey of 11,945 U.S. adults conducted August 7-27, 2023. All individuals who participated are members of the Center’s committee. American trends panel (ATP), an online survey panel recruited through a national random sampling of residential addresses. Address-based sampling ensures that almost all U.S. adults have a chance of being selected. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Learn more about the The ATP methodology.
here is question used for this analysiswith the answers, and the survey methodology.
Across all major demographic groups, football is the most common choice when the public is asked to identify America’s sport. It tops the list for men and women, for older and younger adults, and for white, black, Hispanic and Asian Americans.
Certain demographic differences nevertheless appear for certain sports. For example, white Americans are more likely than other racial or ethnic groups to say the national sport is baseball, while Hispanic Americans are more likely than other groups to say it is football. Black and Asian Americans, meanwhile, are more likely than white and Hispanic Americans to say the American sport is basketball. However, in each of these racial and ethnic groups, the majority of people say the national sport is football.
Most Americans don’t follow sports closely
Just because Americans consider football the national sport doesn’t mean they’ve been closely following the NFL season leading up to this weekend’s Super Bowl LVIII.
Most American adults (62%) say they follow professional or college sports. not too close or not at all, and a similar proportion (63%) say they talk about sports with other people only a few times a month or less often, according to the Center’s August survey. In fact, only 7% of adults are what you might call sports “superfans” – people who follow sport very closely or very closely And talk about sports with other people at least every day.
Note: Here is the question used for this analysiswith the answers, and the survey methodology.
