07-23-2022, 12:06 PM
Some observations of the data on Americans surveyed by age demographic:
* Football is the favorite sport of every single age demographic in America. It's consistently popular across all the demographics, but the 18-29 cohort is the group that likes it the least (still the most popular sport for that group though).
* The olds like baseball, their second favorite sport. Nobody else does. It's less popular than "none of the above" for every demographic below 65. For those under 29 baseball is in the same category as hockey and soccer. Yikes.
* Soccer is an irrelevancy. For no group is it the favorite sport for more than 7 percent of the cohort.
* If 18-29 year olds are the sign of the future/a leading indicator, the sport of the future is actually basketball. For no other cohort is basketball more popular than "none of the above" but for 18-29 it's the favorite sport of a whopping 29 percent, right on football's heels.
My bottom line: the 30-64 year olds for whom football is BY FAR the most favorite sport (two to five times more popular than any other sport for each cohort) are still going to be around for a while, so while we'll see basketball continue to cut into football's dominance, football will be the top dog for decades to come.
I'll put it this way: I turn 40 next year and I don't really anticipate there being a time in my sports-watching life in which the NBA is bigger than the NFL or college basketball is bigger than college football. I could be wrong about that and would welcome the counter-argument but it seems to me that football rules.
* Football is the favorite sport of every single age demographic in America. It's consistently popular across all the demographics, but the 18-29 cohort is the group that likes it the least (still the most popular sport for that group though).
* The olds like baseball, their second favorite sport. Nobody else does. It's less popular than "none of the above" for every demographic below 65. For those under 29 baseball is in the same category as hockey and soccer. Yikes.
* Soccer is an irrelevancy. For no group is it the favorite sport for more than 7 percent of the cohort.
* If 18-29 year olds are the sign of the future/a leading indicator, the sport of the future is actually basketball. For no other cohort is basketball more popular than "none of the above" but for 18-29 it's the favorite sport of a whopping 29 percent, right on football's heels.
My bottom line: the 30-64 year olds for whom football is BY FAR the most favorite sport (two to five times more popular than any other sport for each cohort) are still going to be around for a while, so while we'll see basketball continue to cut into football's dominance, football will be the top dog for decades to come.
I'll put it this way: I turn 40 next year and I don't really anticipate there being a time in my sports-watching life in which the NBA is bigger than the NFL or college basketball is bigger than college football. I could be wrong about that and would welcome the counter-argument but it seems to me that football rules.