When you think about how popular a sport is then it is easy to get drawn into conclusions based on how much you like a certain sport, or how popular sports are near you, or even just how popular they are in your own country. However don’t forget every country has massively different tastes, for instance I’d say American Football was the most popular US sport in terms of how many people watch it, now I don’t have any facts for that, I am just basing it on what I’ve seen, the audience numbers, the excitement people have for each game etc.
However outside of the US then it is not popular at all. There are fans worldwide of course, but as other countries don’t play the sport then it just doesn’t have a following like other sports that they can play and watch themselves. So globally, American Football is not that popular, definitely not compared to the other kind of football (known as soccer in some countries) which is supposed to have about 3 billion fans worldwide!
That number comes off answers.com and it seems a little steep to me as that means nearly 50% of the people in the world are football fans… but whatever the true number is then there is no doubt that it is a game played around the globe, from Pakistan to Portugal, from Peru to Timbuktu (I’m guessing on that last one!) and there are football leagues around the world, including large ones in the UK, Spain and Italy, which fuels peoples passion for the sport.
So what makes it so popular? Well for a start it is easy to play, all you need is a ball and then you can use anything as goal posts, sticks, clothes, bricks, anything, and then you can start playing. That makes is accessible to almost anyone and because kids grow up around the world kicking a football around, then a lot of them will want to watch how the ‘professionals’ do it. That to me is the real reason it is so popular, because pretty much anyone can enjoy it either by watching an amateur team near them, or catching any of the televised matches from any of the leagues around the world.
Remarkably then according to answers.com the second most popular sport is actually cricket! With over 2 billion fans worldwide, I think that is helped by the fact it is incredibly popular in India, which as one of the most populated countries in the world has a lot of fans to offer!