Baseball is known as “America’s favorite pastime.” But for the largest share of the U.S. public, football is “America’s sport,” according to a recent Pew Research Center survey.
In August 2023, we asked nearly 12,000 U.S. adults the following question: “If you had to choose one sport as being ‘America’s sport,’ even if you don’t personally follow it, which sport would it be?” The question was part of a broader survey about sports fandom in the United States.
More than half of Americans (53%) say America’s sport is football – about twice the share who say it’s baseball (27%). Much smaller shares choose one of the other four sports we asked about: basketball (8%), soccer (3%), auto racing (3%) or hockey (1%).
We also included the option for Americans to write in another sport. The most common answers volunteered were golf, boxing, rodeo and ice skating. Other respondents used the opportunity to have some fun: Among the more creative answers we received were “competitive eating,” “grievance politics,” “reality TV” and “cow tipping.”
Ahead of Super Bowl LVIII on Feb. 11, Pew Research Center conducted this analysis to find out which sport Americans see as the country’s sport.
This analysis is based on a survey of 11,945 U.S. adults conducted Aug. 7-27, 2023. Everyone who took part is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. Address-based sampling ensures that nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the ATP’s methodology.
Here is the question used for this analysis, along with responses, and the survey methodology.
In every major demographic group, 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 alike.
Still, some demographic differences emerge for certain sports. For instance, 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’s soccer. Black and Asian Americans, in turn, are more likely than White and Hispanic Americans to say America’s sport is basketball. In each of these racial and ethnic groups, however, by far the largest share of people say the national sport is football.
Most Americans don’t closely follow sports
Just because Americans see football as the national sport doesn’t mean they’ve been closely following the NFL season leading up to this weekend’s Super Bowl LVIII.
Most U.S. adults (62%) say they follow professional or college sports not too or not at all closely, and a similar share (63%) say they talk about sports with other people just a few times a month or less often, according to the Center’s August survey. In fact, only 7% of adults are what might be called sports “superfans” – people who follow sports extremely or very closely and talk about sports with other people at least every day.
Note: Here is the question used for this analysis, along with responses, and the survey methodology.
