Sports are so much bigger than we realize.
1. Universal
- 85% of all people across the globe follow at least one sport regularly.
2. Intergenerational
- 70% of sports fans inherited their favorite teams through their family or hometown.
3. In-Real-Time
- In 2023, 96 of the top 100 watched US television events were sports. In 2022, 1.5 billion people tuned in to the World Cup Final.
4. Idiomatic
- 20% of business and political idioms in English are derived from sports. (“slam dunk,” “home run,” “move the goalposts,” “level playing field”)
5. Massive Economy
- Sports generate more revenue than movies, news, and books combined (est. $600B globally).
6. Cultural Influencers
- Christiano Ronaldo has over 1.0B combined followers, double the next highest. Athletes globally have more followers than entertainers and politicians combined.
7. Engaging + Positive
- Sports posts generate ~30% more engagement than average content, the nearest "positive" coded content close to rage-bait (~60%).
8. Happy
- Watching sports has a 15% increase on subjective well being. (Higher than any factor studied besides health, family, and functional ability.)
9. Trustworthy
- Sports coverage is perceived as 3x more fair and accurate than general news coverage.
10. The Last Shared Reality?
- This point is qualitative, but the one that's most important to me...
Before the Internet, we used to all watch the same newscasts, read from the same magazines and best seller lists, listen to the same music hits, watch the same weekly TV eps, ...
Sports are one of the only things left in life where you *have to be there*. In the moment, with the rest of the world, around the same event, the same drama unfolding in real time.
Sports are a time machine into a world where we still had a collective reality.
Sports may be the most social phenomenon we have left. 12 replies
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