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Most Popular Wikipedia Sports Pages

It is very difficult to determine what are the world's most popular sports, due to the lack of suitable and reliable statistics. In addition, there is no single definition of popular that has been applied to the lists that have been made previously - by popular do they mean most played, most watched or some other definition? The method used for the lists in this article is defining popularity in terms of which sports information pages people view online.



Below is a list of the most viewed sports pages on Wikipedia, the largest and most visited information website online. I have used a technique inspired by that used by the mostpopularsports.net website, which used the analysis of visitors to a range of sports websites. I have also used a similar method to compare Google search traffic for sport names. See also the comparison of internet traffic to the sports sections of the IOC website.

There may be other sports that may rank in the lower part of the list below that were not compared, but I am confident that I have analyzed all of the most popular sports.

Results 2016-2019

The table below uses page traffic data for Wikipedia sports pages for a four year period from the start of 2016 to the end of 2019, extracted using the Toolforge website.

Rank Sport Ave Monthly Views
1 Association football 6588
2 Cricket 6253
3 Basketball 6156
4 American football 4995
5 Volleyball 4732
6 Badminton 4157
7 Formula One 3968
8 Kabaddi 3455
9 Baseball 3309
10 Curling 2987
11 Taekwondo 2921
12 Tennis 2515
13 Ice hockey 2434
14 Boxing 2322
15 Mixed martial arts 2289
16 Karate 2218
17 Muay Thai 2194
18 Brazilian jiu-jitsu 2143
19 Triathlon 1995
20 Table tennis 1988
21 Track and field 1969
22 Rugby union 1912
23 Aikido 1876
24 Judo 1873
25 Golf 1842

Page Results 2008-2010

basketball ringThe table below uses page traffic data for Wikipedia pages for a three year period from the start of 2008 to the end of 2010

The highest single ranked sport page is basketball, however due to the way the stats are counted it is really not the true most popular sport. Many world football fans in the US would search for 'Soccer', and on Wikipedia they would be redirected to the 'Association Football' page. The page first accessed is counted, so the stats are split between the two pages. Therefore I have combined the stats for the two pages (Association Football and Soccer), and the combined average visitor number is now ranked highest.

Major world sporting events were clearly affecting the stats. During the Olympics in 2008, sports like Gymnastics had a spike in views, and the FIFA World Cup in 2010 had a significant effect on Soccer page views. You can see that in 2010 the average daily views of the Soccer/Assoc Football pages was much higher than the average of the years 2008-2010. There seems to be a large number of sports popular in North America high on this list, possibly due to the high number of US traffic on the English Wikipedia site. See more limitations of this method below.

rank Sport Page Name 2008-2010 average daily visitors 2010 stats only
1 Association Football + Soccer 8407 (6344 + 2063) 14766 (12800 + 1966)
2 Basketball 7337 8396
3 American Football 5730 7305
4 Cricket 5310 6774
5 Baseball 4419 5308
6 Tennis 4276 4361
7 Volleyball 3624 4010
8 Boxing 3545 4053
9 Ice Hockey 3362 5295
10 Golf 3355 3672
11 Badminton 3169 3546
12 Rugby Union 2183 2962
13 Triathlon 2183 2496
14 Table Tennis 2163 2438
15 Lacrosse 2144 2241
16 Gymnastics 1682 1810
17 Softball 1481 1712
18 Team Handball 1452 1711
19 Australian Rules Football 1396 2111
20 Archery 1365 1728
21 Wrestling 1310 1342
22 Rugby League 1217 1717
23 Netball 1126 1373
24 Field Hockey 1099 1519
25 Skiing 1060 1330

Less Popular

Other sports which did not make it onto the list above include: Athletics (Sport) (914/1371), Rowing (Sport) (791), Swimming (Sport) (647/1349), Track and Field (620), Water polo (978), Ten-Pin Bowling (832), Dragon Boat (409), Bicycle Racing (153), Sailing (Sport) (13).

Notes

Limitations

This method only notes the most popular pages - the number of page visitors can depend on the quality of the page information, search engine rankings and strength of competing websites. It also does not take into consideration internet traffic to other pages for that sport e.g. accessing the Wikipedia Super Bowl page does not affect the American Football page stats. Also, Wikipedia uses page redirects, for example Soccer redirects to Association Football, and the page originally accessed is counted so stats are split between each page. Only English pages were analyzed, so the data is biased to those with internet access in the English speaking world. The above analysis was based on the whole of 2008, 2009 and 2010 years (2007 was not available), to avoid the effect of major sporting events held every four years (such as the FIFA World Cup, Olympics). Just the stats from 2010 are also shown for comparison.



Related Pages

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Lists Extra

Football/Soccer is clearly the world's most popular sport, and has the most popular athletes, but which sport has the fittest players (but not necessarily the greatest athlete). These players do not always earn the most. The best of the best have made it to our 7 Sporting Wonders Lists.

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