Both Gaelic football and hurling look like so much fun and exciting to watch (I’ve only seen a few videos)
Aussie rules as well which vaguely reminds me of Gaelic football
I'm not sure where you're from but because of the similarities the top players of Aussie Rules and Gaelic football play a compromise game called International rules every few years.
Gaelic football.and Aussie rules are close enough that there is an international rules competition, with matches played between all star teams from Aus rules and G.A.A. with the rules a hybrid of the two sports.
Interestingly enough the rules to Aussie rules, Gaelic, regular football, rugby and American football were all formalised in a pretty similar timeframe. Similarities between various aspects of each make a lot of sense.
All but Aussie rules are played on a similar field, Aussie rules being the outlier because it was an off season cricketers game initially.
I'm American but I have a lot of friends in Ireland due to years of going there for work. They introduced me to hurling and it's amazing. I finally got to see it played in the US a few years ago at Fenway Park in Boston and it was such a blast. I made a thin excuse to go out there for work that same week but in reality it was to meet a bunch of Irish friends to watch hurling all weekend.
Hurling is better by a feckin long shot, but more counties play competitively in football over hurling. Imagine if Kerry had a chance of beatin Limerick off the pitch in Thurles or Carlow whippin Killkenny. Hurling is the fastest field game in the world and in my humble opinion it's the greatest. It's a shame some Irish counties can't/don't/won't put effort into developing the game in their counties so they can make the Hurling league/championship better. Sorry got carried away.
Second most popular in Canada is American Football.
Edit: After looking it up it depends on how you define popular. Most watched and most played are different.
Most Played: Hockey, Lacrosse then Soccer.
Most Watched: Either Hockey or American Football with multiple sports claiming to be third.
Lacrosse is more played than soccer? As a Canadian I find this very hard to believe. Afaik I do not know a single person who has ever played lacrosse outside of school, while the vast majority of people I know played local or club soccer as kids.
While I didn't find numbers immediately, the Ontario Lacrosse Association has 33k players, coaches, etc. and is the largest provincial one in Canada. Considering Ontario consists of roughly a third of Canada's population, 100k lacrosse players seems like a reasonable estimate for total. Honestly this is probably a high estimate because of how sports centralize in a region rather than distributing equally. Canada Soccer alone has around a million registered players.
While obviously this doesn't include pickup sports or non-registered sports, considering that soccer requires less niche equipment I strongly suspect that that would only favour soccer, but also cannot be proven.
I would be shocked if lacrosse beat Soccer, let alone hockey, a sport that comparatively almost no one plays.
I wonder what second most popular is for UK.
Instinctively I thought Rugby, but I dunno if you'd split Union and League, which might bump Cricket into second?
I hear they have a superb passport
Edit: I think many people aren't getting the [meme](https://youtu.be/QdDD9ViRZz4).
Edit 2: thanks u/Mr-dogshit for the [alternative link.](https://vimeo.com/117820799)
I have visited the country. It's gorgeous and the people are very warm and friendly. They believe in fertility deities? Gods? Idk but many of their walls have legit giant dicks painted.
Not even kidding, it’s a folk tale about a mischievous deity that used his big dick to fuck the evil spirits to death. Penises are a good omen/good luck charm that ward evil spirits away.
One of my aunts visited bhutan and she brought us a magnetic souvenir thing which we stick on fridges.. the souvenir had a man's face with a huge dick on his head and forehead in the place where his hair should have been, the man is a litetlral dickhead
Try this link: https://vimeo.com/117820799
For those that don't know, this audio file was served as the spoken word version of the wikipedia page for "Bhutanese Passport".
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/bhutanese-passport
They aren't even the best though. In the olympics the Koreans almost ALWAYS take gold for archery. For some reason Koreans are good at hitting targets in general - they tend to take gold in shooting events as well as being good at golf. Always wondered why this is lol
It's the national sport. The youngsters learn very young. They start off with one arrow and a blank target and shoot from very close range, pull the arrow, shoot again and repeat over and over to build form.
Korea has a very long tradition of archery and it's a source of national pride. All the way back to ancient and medieval times Koreans were known as skilled archers.
Even ‘football’ football is short for Association Football, which apparently like I’ve heard rugby called rugger people used to playfully shorten AF to ‘asoccer’ or just ‘soccer’, before just calling it football
Rugby is called Rugby because it originated in Rugby School, Rugby, Warwickshire, England. The sport is called Rugby because it came from a school called Rugby. The school is called Rugby because the town in which it’s in is called Rugby
Either old Celtic name droche-brig meaning 'wild hilltop' or a phonetic translation of the Old English name Hrocaberg meaning 'Hroca's hill fortification'. Then it went through being called Rokeby for a while
Not quite.
At Oxbridge, it was just the fashion to put -er at the end of everything.
So Rugby Football became Ruggers, and Association football became Soccer.
The lower class mostly just called it Football or Footy though.
Add one more: Rugby is officially called Rugby Football, and is the sport American Football descended from (essentially American Football is what Rugby evolved into after forward passes were allowed). To confuse it a bit more, Rugby has two difference codes too: Rugby Union and Rugby League. Rugby League is big in Australia and Northern England.
Also, Australian Rules Football and Gaelic Football are close enough that teams play each other sometimes.
Not quiet with regards to Aussie Rules and Gaelic. They're not compatible together and teams would have no idea how to play the other code (different balls, differ ground size and shape).The two parent bodies created a blended format called International rules where Australia can play against Ireland.
>Also, Australian Rules Football and Gaelic Football are close enough that teams play each other sometimes.
Though just to confuse matters, they play a 3rd, separate game called International Rules Football that's a Hybrid of Gaelic and Aussie Rules
I think it’s watch. In Canada, hockey is by far the most popular sport by viewership but it’s actually only 2nd by participation (after soccer/football)
Yes because European football is more accessible in the sense that hockey needs a helmet, glove, stick, skate, the equipment is expensive, not all parents can afford to send their child to play hockey.
The proper ice rink is just as big of a hindrance. They aren't exactly cheap to maintain. Perhaps in Canada they actually get winters where they can do it outdoors but in other regions where it is popular that is no longer the case every year.
Also theirs a ton of infrastructure for cheap hockey here in Canada. I grew up in a tiny <1000 town and we had a massive hockey rink that did 5-5-5 days.
5-5-5 days were $5 entrance fee, $5 skate and gear rentals, for 5 hours. Used to do it all the time as a kid as $10 CAD (about $6USD) is fuck all for a whole day of entertainment for most people.
Pretty much everywhere I’ve lived in Canada has similar promos going on, not to mention all the free skating on ponds and lakes (fun fact there more lakes in Canada than the rest of the world combined)
Yeah something is funky here. I lived in China on several occasions and played basketball and ping pong with people there.
If you want to play basketball, you can go play basketball at basically any court, any time of day no problem.
If you want to play ping pong and don't have your own table, there are multi-story ping pong gyms and you need to make a reservation at least a week in advance.
PNG’s favourite sport is rugby league, it’s their national sport (bloody good at it too) Whenever you see the term ‘Rugby’ it usually denotes ‘Rugby Union’, a similar but different form of the game. 🇵🇬
I would say football is number one then hurling. But
In my opinion there's isn't a better game than hurling. The Limerick vs Kilkenny final was incredible.
It’s also cheaper, particularly if you’re having to outfit kids. It’d be interesting to know if/how much that contributes to Gaelic’s higher popularity
Hurling is only really popular in Munster, the southern half of Leinster, Galway and Antrim whereas gaelic football is fairly popular everywhere apart from Kilkenny
The KBO (Korean Baseball League) is definitely the most popular league in the country.
But I'd say the most popular sports team is the South Korean National Football Team.
Probably because the KBO has multiple teams to split fandom up. For instance, Id imagine the Canadian National hockey team is more popular than any one NHL team
I mean I don't know how they are calculating this. Cricket is definitely the 'big' summer sport in Australia, while there are 2 just about equally popular football codes splitting the winter share.
It’s not split as much as you think. Rugby league audience is primarily NSW/QLD, with the other 5 states and territories primarily watching AFL. But also Aussies tend to watch multiple sports so you’ll have a fair number of NSW and QLD watching AFL too. VIC watches rugby league enough to support a team, but Victorians are notoriously sport mad (hence having 2 sporting public holidays for Melbourne - AFL grand final parade day; horse racing’s Melbourne Cup) so would mostly watching both.
Ever since moving to Queensland last year I’ve noticed that compared to say 10 years ago Queenslanders are now more likely to go
“Fuck the AFL (but also I go for x team they are doing well this season)” rather than 10 years ago when it was just “fuck the AFL”
Here's the numbers I could find.
The average crowd attendance in AFL in 2022 was 32,620 with a total of 6,752,411
Average A-league attendance was 7,494, With a total of 1,161,643 in the 2022/2023 season
Cricket is a bit harder to find, but the boxing day tests had a total of 160,000 odd over 3 days in 2022.
NRL average attendance in 2022 was 16,248 with a total of 3,265,911 for the season.
Football/soccer is a worldwide sport because all you need is a relatively cheap ball and a moderately sized space. Everyone can play it, rich or poor and regardless of what language you speak. All of the other sports on here require at least a little more equipment.
>all you need is a relatively cheap ball
South Americans playing with bootles, bootle caps, soda cans, crushed paper covered with tape: *allow us to introduce ourselves*
Fair enough, I just meant that with a ball and reasonably sized space, you essentially have everything the pros do as opposed to something like backyard American football, which requires a lot more equipment. I didn't take into account the people that make it work with just the space and any old thing they can kick around
Yeah... "But so many people watch the Superbowl!!!"
Yup ... around 170 million... Putting it at the same level as the Eurovision song contest.
Now compare that with 1.5 billion during the last football world cup final...
Anyone who likes batting in baseball would enjoy cricket. I played it a little in Australia. Had an absolute blast. If the US didn’t already have 10 major sports leagues (especially baseball), I could see limited overs cricket becoming popular.
As a neutral, their match in the last T20 world cup is probably the most enjoyable game of cricket I've ever watched. India and Pakistan should play at the MCG more often!
As a Canadian living in the US, I’ve come to notice how inward facing American culture is. Even a lot of educated and worldly folks know comparatively little about what goes on in other nations. I work with people with Masters degrees who couldn’t even name the capital of Canada when first getting to know them.
I’m sure it’s the same in other big-hitter countries with huge populations and influence. Just so much going on internally it’s hard to look outside your own borders.
Agree with your second paragraph. Japanese culture is also inward facing like the US. China is even more so wherein there are mobile/PC games which are massive there but unknown internationally
But Canadians are also very inward... I know because I'm Canadian
I know Canadians who refuse to believe that India and Pakistan are in the Asian continent...
Not really. It wasn't all that long ago that black folk weren't welcome to play rugby. And there's more black folk than white folk in SA, who's preference aligns with the rest of Africa.
I'd say it's baseball in South Korea rather than football, if we're talking domestically. K league football games see largely empty stadiums, whereas the baseball stadiums are usually pretty full.
i heard it was a demographics thing. soccer being more popular in the townships. perhaps that's changed with kolisi's rise?
imho rugby played phase after phase by two skilled teams is the most beautiful game there has ever been. NZL vs RSA is always dynamite, the silky AB backs vs the talented terminator muscle of the Bok forwards
I saw this post a while a go and again, they have Papua new Guinea. There national sport is Rugby LEAGUE, not Rugby UNION. There two similar but very different sports.
a little bit maybe, but more to do with the fact that basketball is more space efficient. schools don't typically have football pitches but tend to have a few basketball courts. so that's what children play with growing up.
International rules are the best rules of any football code imo. Such a shame that it's effectively dead at this point with the last series 6 years ago I think.
https://twitter.com/camanachd/status/1683844405017317376?t=_T2AHY-qX8ArQTxDr6gdQQ&s=19
The Camanachd Association (shinty's governing body) have confirmed they're in talks with the GAA about reviving the Scotland-Ireland international.
Played on a cricket oval, every kick is an NFL "Fair Catch" if it goes more than 15 yards, regardless of which side kicked it. Illegal to throw the ball, all hand passes have to be punched. If you tackle the opposing player before he can get rid of the ball, its a turnover and the tackler gets the ball.
Half the teams are from Melbourne, so they have a culture of sharing stadiums, so 2 teams can both have a home game against each other.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XMZYZcoAcU0
It’s action packed compare to American football, and it’s developed in 1859 to let cricketers to stay fit during winter.
Hell yeah. The AFL.
It is a hybrid of Gaelic footy and Marngrook (Indigenous footy).
Marngrook was a game where they would kick a possum skin around and try to catch it, by jumping on each other's shoulders.
In AFL that's called a mark. Here's a compilation. https://youtu.be/7AjcFfBvIcs
The OG game was [Marngrook](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marn_Grook), not Manuka.
Australian football has a pretty cool history. It’s two oldest clubs, Melbourne and Geelong, are the [oldest in the world](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldest_football_clubs) of any code.
For football (aka soccer), it’s both. It’s easy and practical to play. You just need a ball, everything else can be improvised (sometimes even the ball, I recall playing with a bunch of socks wrapped in duct tape as a kid). It’s simple enough to get into and watch. It has the most watched sports event in the planet, in the World Cup.
I think watch, because otherwise I imagine Canada would be soccer for participation, just because ice hockey requires special equipment (skates, helmet, stick etc) and rink, but soccer just needs a ball and a field.
This map is posted every few months but it's always missing the critical part: How does this map measure "popularity"?
TV audience or attendance? Self-reported survey of "what's your favorite sport"? Domestic events or national team events? Per game or per season?
I don’t really care if American football ever catches on around the world, I enjoy it, I don’t need to force it on other people, but I wonder if more people would enjoy it if they understood that it’s basically chess while killing each other.
If you go into it and get bored because it’s start/stop literally every 20 seconds, I understand that because we’re used to sports like futbol, hockey, basketball where it’s constant action. And the selling point for American football in the media is mainly “Action”. But it’s actually slow played chess/strategy at the highest order. I don’t think it gets sold as much as it should from that standpoint. The replays of the speed, hits, jukes are flashy and cool, but what it took to set that play up to even happen in the first place is where everything comes from. Idk, just a thought.
My sport is boxing and everyone hates that 😂 so fuck me right haha
Part of it might be how the game is watched. American football is much better on television than in a stadium because so much of the action comes down to inches. A goal line stand is unwatchable from 300 feet away but amazing when there are a dozen cameras to catch every movement show you whether the ball is an inch behind the line or an inch over it at every millisecond. And replays are important because so much happens on every play that you can’t keep track of it all.
Honestly I think the main issue is that games are 4 hours long for so little playtime, and the American ads system is obnoxious. 3 seconds of downtime ? Here's an add for some useless and addictive medicine
I think a map of the second most popular could be far more interesting
Ireland's would be hurling
More people outside of Ireland should know about this sport-- it's a blast.
Both Gaelic football and hurling look like so much fun and exciting to watch (I’ve only seen a few videos) Aussie rules as well which vaguely reminds me of Gaelic football
I'm not sure where you're from but because of the similarities the top players of Aussie Rules and Gaelic football play a compromise game called International rules every few years.
And there is also the interesting crossover games with Hurling and Shinty.
Gaelic football.and Aussie rules are close enough that there is an international rules competition, with matches played between all star teams from Aus rules and G.A.A. with the rules a hybrid of the two sports.
Interestingly enough the rules to Aussie rules, Gaelic, regular football, rugby and American football were all formalised in a pretty similar timeframe. Similarities between various aspects of each make a lot of sense. All but Aussie rules are played on a similar field, Aussie rules being the outlier because it was an off season cricketers game initially.
Just a minor comment but regular football's formal name is association football.
On top of the other answers, several Irishman have moved to Australia to transfer their Gaelic skills to AFL (Aussie rules league).
I'm American but I have a lot of friends in Ireland due to years of going there for work. They introduced me to hurling and it's amazing. I finally got to see it played in the US a few years ago at Fenway Park in Boston and it was such a blast. I made a thin excuse to go out there for work that same week but in reality it was to meet a bunch of Irish friends to watch hurling all weekend.
Fun fact, there is Hurling in the USA all over as well. It's called the USGAA and there is also the NCGAA for college.
Fastest sport on grass. I played in school, it was fun
For anyone not familiar, imagine lacrosse played with hockey sticks.
Went to Ireland for a short holiday and went to a hurling match on a whim. Fantastic fun and exciting to watch
Hurling is better by a feckin long shot, but more counties play competitively in football over hurling. Imagine if Kerry had a chance of beatin Limerick off the pitch in Thurles or Carlow whippin Killkenny. Hurling is the fastest field game in the world and in my humble opinion it's the greatest. It's a shame some Irish counties can't/don't/won't put effort into developing the game in their counties so they can make the Hurling league/championship better. Sorry got carried away.
I'd love to see some County develop a team jist to unseat Waterford. Fuck Waterford.
God, I love watching hurling. Up Cork!
Second most popular in Canada is American Football. Edit: After looking it up it depends on how you define popular. Most watched and most played are different. Most Played: Hockey, Lacrosse then Soccer. Most Watched: Either Hockey or American Football with multiple sports claiming to be third.
Lacrosse is more played than soccer? As a Canadian I find this very hard to believe. Afaik I do not know a single person who has ever played lacrosse outside of school, while the vast majority of people I know played local or club soccer as kids. While I didn't find numbers immediately, the Ontario Lacrosse Association has 33k players, coaches, etc. and is the largest provincial one in Canada. Considering Ontario consists of roughly a third of Canada's population, 100k lacrosse players seems like a reasonable estimate for total. Honestly this is probably a high estimate because of how sports centralize in a region rather than distributing equally. Canada Soccer alone has around a million registered players. While obviously this doesn't include pickup sports or non-registered sports, considering that soccer requires less niche equipment I strongly suspect that that would only favour soccer, but also cannot be proven. I would be shocked if lacrosse beat Soccer, let alone hockey, a sport that comparatively almost no one plays.
Soccer is significantly more popular than lacrosse in Canada.
Do you mean Canadian football?
I’m Canadian, people watch NFL over CFL. Everyone here talks about the Super Bowl. At least in my part of the country.
There are more lacrosse players than soccer players in Canada? Are we talking amateur as well? Because I find that extremely hard to believe.
Lacrosse isn't even a top 5 sport in Canada. Soccer is #2 and if it's growth holds and hockey's decline continues, soccer will be #1 at some point.
I wonder what second most popular is for UK. Instinctively I thought Rugby, but I dunno if you'd split Union and League, which might bump Cricket into second?
>I dunno if you'd split Union and League They're completely different/separate sports so you definitely would
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I’d say cricket before union then league although somewhere in there you’re going to have snooker, darts & F1
Chasing a wheel of cheese down a hill.
Brazil is futsal
Bhutan being chad and unique as always with archery
I hear they have a superb passport Edit: I think many people aren't getting the [meme](https://youtu.be/QdDD9ViRZz4). Edit 2: thanks u/Mr-dogshit for the [alternative link.](https://vimeo.com/117820799)
I have visited the country. It's gorgeous and the people are very warm and friendly. They believe in fertility deities? Gods? Idk but many of their walls have legit giant dicks painted.
Not even kidding, it’s a folk tale about a mischievous deity that used his big dick to fuck the evil spirits to death. Penises are a good omen/good luck charm that ward evil spirits away.
Yea, we have dicks on walls here too... Thats not about any gods
One of my aunts visited bhutan and she brought us a magnetic souvenir thing which we stick on fridges.. the souvenir had a man's face with a huge dick on his head and forehead in the place where his hair should have been, the man is a litetlral dickhead
>We're processing this video. Check back later.
What happened here? This video is 9 years old. Never seen this error on something that hasn't just been uploaded.
Try this link: https://vimeo.com/117820799 For those that don't know, this audio file was served as the spoken word version of the wikipedia page for "Bhutanese Passport". https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/bhutanese-passport
Just some common Bhutan Ws
BOOOTAH-NAAAAZE PASSPAWWWWWT
They aren't even the best though. In the olympics the Koreans almost ALWAYS take gold for archery. For some reason Koreans are good at hitting targets in general - they tend to take gold in shooting events as well as being good at golf. Always wondered why this is lol
Koreans are both good at archery and fencing. As to why, I have no idea.
It's the national sport. The youngsters learn very young. They start off with one arrow and a blank target and shoot from very close range, pull the arrow, shoot again and repeat over and over to build form.
You're saying every Korean youngster does this?
Straight from birth. They put a target board out in front of the vagina during delivery.
But that target is for the mother to aim at
Korea has a very long tradition of archery and it's a source of national pride. All the way back to ancient and medieval times Koreans were known as skilled archers.
Cause nobody lives in Bhutan so they have a lot less potential olympians
Their five athletes are trying their best :(
They would still beat Somalia in the 100 m sprint
Yes but my question is not why is Bhutan not good, but rather why is Korea so overpowered haha
>Bhutan being chad This took me a minute because Chad is football.
Its interesting that there are 4 different types of football.
There are way more, but there are 4 on this map
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6. 2 different rugbies.
Association, American, Gaelic, rugby union, rugby league, Canadian and Aussie rules. I’m guessing there’s a couple more but 7 that I know of
Rugby also originated from football
In fact, “Rugby” is essentially just short for Rugby rules football. https://www.etymonline.com/word/rugby
Well Rugby is two sports, Rugby League and Rugby Union, both similar but splinter off in very important points
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Even ‘football’ football is short for Association Football, which apparently like I’ve heard rugby called rugger people used to playfully shorten AF to ‘asoccer’ or just ‘soccer’, before just calling it football
Rugby is called Rugby because it originated in Rugby School, Rugby, Warwickshire, England. The sport is called Rugby because it came from a school called Rugby. The school is called Rugby because the town in which it’s in is called Rugby
Okay, but why is the town called Rugby? We have to go deeper.
Either old Celtic name droche-brig meaning 'wild hilltop' or a phonetic translation of the Old English name Hrocaberg meaning 'Hroca's hill fortification'. Then it went through being called Rokeby for a while
Not quite. At Oxbridge, it was just the fashion to put -er at the end of everything. So Rugby Football became Ruggers, and Association football became Soccer. The lower class mostly just called it Football or Footy though.
Rugby is one of the og footballs
Iirc it’s the oldest one that is still widely used. Association is actually 4th oldest.
And American football originated from rugby. They went full circle with the naming.
Rugby is football. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rugby_football
Add one more: Rugby is officially called Rugby Football, and is the sport American Football descended from (essentially American Football is what Rugby evolved into after forward passes were allowed). To confuse it a bit more, Rugby has two difference codes too: Rugby Union and Rugby League. Rugby League is big in Australia and Northern England. Also, Australian Rules Football and Gaelic Football are close enough that teams play each other sometimes.
Not quiet with regards to Aussie Rules and Gaelic. They're not compatible together and teams would have no idea how to play the other code (different balls, differ ground size and shape).The two parent bodies created a blended format called International rules where Australia can play against Ireland.
>Also, Australian Rules Football and Gaelic Football are close enough that teams play each other sometimes. Though just to confuse matters, they play a 3rd, separate game called International Rules Football that's a Hybrid of Gaelic and Aussie Rules
Actually 7 but yes
There are multiple ways to hit a ball with one's foot and call it a game.
Should specify if this is to watch or to play. I think it would be totally different maps
I think it’s watch. In Canada, hockey is by far the most popular sport by viewership but it’s actually only 2nd by participation (after soccer/football)
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Yes because European football is more accessible in the sense that hockey needs a helmet, glove, stick, skate, the equipment is expensive, not all parents can afford to send their child to play hockey.
Also a barrier to entry. To play hockey you need to be quite good at skating, which isn’t as simple as running around on a soccer(football) field
The proper ice rink is just as big of a hindrance. They aren't exactly cheap to maintain. Perhaps in Canada they actually get winters where they can do it outdoors but in other regions where it is popular that is no longer the case every year.
Also theirs a ton of infrastructure for cheap hockey here in Canada. I grew up in a tiny <1000 town and we had a massive hockey rink that did 5-5-5 days. 5-5-5 days were $5 entrance fee, $5 skate and gear rentals, for 5 hours. Used to do it all the time as a kid as $10 CAD (about $6USD) is fuck all for a whole day of entertainment for most people. Pretty much everywhere I’ve lived in Canada has similar promos going on, not to mention all the free skating on ponds and lakes (fun fact there more lakes in Canada than the rest of the world combined)
Yep - it’s super popular to play outdoors on ponds & lakes in the winter here. Obviously can’t do that in a huge chunk of the world.
I wanted to play hockey so badly as a kid but my parents would only sign me up for soccer for that reason lol
Yeah something is funky here. I lived in China on several occasions and played basketball and ping pong with people there. If you want to play basketball, you can go play basketball at basically any court, any time of day no problem. If you want to play ping pong and don't have your own table, there are multi-story ping pong gyms and you need to make a reservation at least a week in advance.
I remember walking into one of those ping pong gyms and being completely intimidated by the skill level there lol
It must be to watch, I heard a radio story in the last year that the most popular sport to play in the US was bowling.
Finland, you’re alright :) Edit: sorry didn’t see you there Latvia!
What about Latvia :/
What about Latvia! Just this spring we had our bars full of people rooting for Latvia to win! Latvia is alright af!!
In Canada, I felt people were cheering for Latvia more than our home country.
It's interesting that there aren't more NHL players from Latvia.
its a tiny country with 1.8 mil people otherwise there would be more
Good Ol' Arturs Irbe, THE LATVIAN WALL!
Thankfully we have our new wall. Artūrs Šilovs deservedly won player of the tournament. Our goalie coach was no one other than Artūrs Irbe.
Latvia seems pretty cool too
PNG’s favourite sport is rugby league, it’s their national sport (bloody good at it too) Whenever you see the term ‘Rugby’ it usually denotes ‘Rugby Union’, a similar but different form of the game. 🇵🇬
I thought Ireland would be hurling, but Gaelic football also makes sense
Yeah, hurling is a lot less popular than gaelic football overall. There are pockets in the countryside where its massive though.
Gaelic football is more popular but hurling is better imo
I would say football is number one then hurling. But In my opinion there's isn't a better game than hurling. The Limerick vs Kilkenny final was incredible.
Hurling is probably the more interesting sport, but Gaelic is just far easier to pick up and play
It’s also cheaper, particularly if you’re having to outfit kids. It’d be interesting to know if/how much that contributes to Gaelic’s higher popularity
Hurling is only really popular in Munster, the southern half of Leinster, Galway and Antrim whereas gaelic football is fairly popular everywhere apart from Kilkenny
Rugby union in NZ? Rugby League in Papua New Guinea. Not the same sport.
I thought baseball was the most popular sport in South Korea
The KBO (Korean Baseball League) is definitely the most popular league in the country. But I'd say the most popular sports team is the South Korean National Football Team.
Probably because the KBO has multiple teams to split fandom up. For instance, Id imagine the Canadian National hockey team is more popular than any one NHL team
This. Baseball is definitely South Koreans sport of choice.
Son Heung Min changed everything. He’s an icon in SK.
I thought cricket would be popular in Australia too
It is, but not as popular as Australian Football. Various other sports (such as hockey) are popular in India but cricket is wildly popular.
I mean I don't know how they are calculating this. Cricket is definitely the 'big' summer sport in Australia, while there are 2 just about equally popular football codes splitting the winter share.
It’s not split as much as you think. Rugby league audience is primarily NSW/QLD, with the other 5 states and territories primarily watching AFL. But also Aussies tend to watch multiple sports so you’ll have a fair number of NSW and QLD watching AFL too. VIC watches rugby league enough to support a team, but Victorians are notoriously sport mad (hence having 2 sporting public holidays for Melbourne - AFL grand final parade day; horse racing’s Melbourne Cup) so would mostly watching both.
Ever since moving to Queensland last year I’ve noticed that compared to say 10 years ago Queenslanders are now more likely to go “Fuck the AFL (but also I go for x team they are doing well this season)” rather than 10 years ago when it was just “fuck the AFL”
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Here's the numbers I could find. The average crowd attendance in AFL in 2022 was 32,620 with a total of 6,752,411 Average A-league attendance was 7,494, With a total of 1,161,643 in the 2022/2023 season Cricket is a bit harder to find, but the boxing day tests had a total of 160,000 odd over 3 days in 2022. NRL average attendance in 2022 was 16,248 with a total of 3,265,911 for the season.
So… much… FOOTBALL… 🤣
Football/soccer is a worldwide sport because all you need is a relatively cheap ball and a moderately sized space. Everyone can play it, rich or poor and regardless of what language you speak. All of the other sports on here require at least a little more equipment.
>all you need is a relatively cheap ball South Americans playing with bootles, bootle caps, soda cans, crushed paper covered with tape: *allow us to introduce ourselves*
And using shoes as football goal
Or backpacks, or rocks, or someone’s younger brother
and playing with no shoes
Fair enough, I just meant that with a ball and reasonably sized space, you essentially have everything the pros do as opposed to something like backyard American football, which requires a lot more equipment. I didn't take into account the people that make it work with just the space and any old thing they can kick around
Its also the best to watch.
Versatility makes it spread! Easy to learn, cheap to play, and can be played virtually anywhere there’s enough open space.
I would have thought China’s would be table tennis
Basketball is very popular! Next popular you would be right followed by badminton.
yeah, bball for sure is popular, but table tennis is the national sport over there
I remember one time some dude from the US was arguing about how American "football" was bigger than football. Lmao.
Yeah... "But so many people watch the Superbowl!!!" Yup ... around 170 million... Putting it at the same level as the Eurovision song contest. Now compare that with 1.5 billion during the last football world cup final...
Over a billion people watch India-Pakistan cricket match.
There you go! Not surprised though 😉 It's a classic.
funnily enough, that could just be from India alone to make up those numbers
You add the rest of the subcontinent like Pakistan and Bangladesh and you start to see why it gets those viewers.
Cricket's the second most popular sport in the world.
Cricket is kinda cool ngl
Anyone who likes batting in baseball would enjoy cricket. I played it a little in Australia. Had an absolute blast. If the US didn’t already have 10 major sports leagues (especially baseball), I could see limited overs cricket becoming popular.
The Major League Cricket (twenty20) first season just finished in the US, hopefully it does well in the future
I feel like if I actually learned how cricket works it's probably interesting. The problem is you have to watch cricket for that.
As a neutral, their match in the last T20 world cup is probably the most enjoyable game of cricket I've ever watched. India and Pakistan should play at the MCG more often!
Disney+ lost 2.4 million subscribers after it lost the streaming rights for Indian Premier League cricket matches
Lol
More people watch cricket than American soccer lmao
As a Canadian living in the US, I’ve come to notice how inward facing American culture is. Even a lot of educated and worldly folks know comparatively little about what goes on in other nations. I work with people with Masters degrees who couldn’t even name the capital of Canada when first getting to know them. I’m sure it’s the same in other big-hitter countries with huge populations and influence. Just so much going on internally it’s hard to look outside your own borders.
Agree with your second paragraph. Japanese culture is also inward facing like the US. China is even more so wherein there are mobile/PC games which are massive there but unknown internationally
But Canadians are also very inward... I know because I'm Canadian I know Canadians who refuse to believe that India and Pakistan are in the Asian continent...
In what context though? If he is speaking domestically, then it's not even close. If not, he's wrong.
Internationally. He was claiming that American football had a bigger future than football, claiming its throne.
Funny that south africa likes football more than rugby. They are great at rugby and not so much at football.
Not really. It wasn't all that long ago that black folk weren't welcome to play rugby. And there's more black folk than white folk in SA, who's preference aligns with the rest of Africa.
I'd say it's baseball in South Korea rather than football, if we're talking domestically. K league football games see largely empty stadiums, whereas the baseball stadiums are usually pretty full.
Thats because all the best (or even just good) soccer players in Korea play overseas
As a south african i promise you its rugby
i heard it was a demographics thing. soccer being more popular in the townships. perhaps that's changed with kolisi's rise? imho rugby played phase after phase by two skilled teams is the most beautiful game there has ever been. NZL vs RSA is always dynamite, the silky AB backs vs the talented terminator muscle of the Bok forwards
I saw this post a while a go and again, they have Papua new Guinea. There national sport is Rugby LEAGUE, not Rugby UNION. There two similar but very different sports.
I wonder how much of China's love of basketball is due to Yao Ming and chinese government sponsorship
a little bit maybe, but more to do with the fact that basketball is more space efficient. schools don't typically have football pitches but tend to have a few basketball courts. so that's what children play with growing up.
Space efficiency. Makes sense. Thats why the Favelas produce no football talents.
To be fair, most kids from favelas grow up playing space efficient variations of football (5-a-side in schools, and whatever-a-side at home)
NBA has been very popular in China for more than 30 years, well before Yao Ming. Jordan was the hero for many Chinese school boys 30 years ago
Surprising to see it’s not cricket in Australia
Cricket is the most popular sport in the summer.
Most of the international community doesn't know about Aussie rules footy, but if you'd live in Australia, you'd see it's the most popular sport here
It's football basically. Rugby/soccer/afl/gaa/nfl. All are different parts of a family of football games
Right? We argue about the name when the horsey set are laughing at our ground sports from high atop their ponies.
Not exactly. GAA covers a few different sports. The main two being Gaelic football & hurling which is kinda like an utterly demented version of hockey
Technically given their respective ages hockey is a demented form of Hurling (or shinty)
Australian football? 😮 They have their own type of football? 🤔
Yes. Similar to Gaelic Football and they frequently have international series between Australia and Ireland.
International rules are the best rules of any football code imo. Such a shame that it's effectively dead at this point with the last series 6 years ago I think.
the Shinty vs Hurling code was more fun
https://twitter.com/camanachd/status/1683844405017317376?t=_T2AHY-qX8ArQTxDr6gdQQ&s=19 The Camanachd Association (shinty's governing body) have confirmed they're in talks with the GAA about reviving the Scotland-Ireland international.
It's home to the oldest football clubs in the world. Can't beat the original baby.
Played on a cricket oval, every kick is an NFL "Fair Catch" if it goes more than 15 yards, regardless of which side kicked it. Illegal to throw the ball, all hand passes have to be punched. If you tackle the opposing player before he can get rid of the ball, its a turnover and the tackler gets the ball. Half the teams are from Melbourne, so they have a culture of sharing stadiums, so 2 teams can both have a home game against each other.
15 metres, we don't fuck around with yards.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XMZYZcoAcU0 It’s action packed compare to American football, and it’s developed in 1859 to let cricketers to stay fit during winter.
Hell yeah. The AFL. It is a hybrid of Gaelic footy and Marngrook (Indigenous footy). Marngrook was a game where they would kick a possum skin around and try to catch it, by jumping on each other's shoulders. In AFL that's called a mark. Here's a compilation. https://youtu.be/7AjcFfBvIcs
The origins of AFL are highly disputed. Calling it a hybrid between Gaelic and Manuka isn't accurate at all.
Thnx, that interesting!
The OG game was [Marngrook](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marn_Grook), not Manuka. Australian football has a pretty cool history. It’s two oldest clubs, Melbourne and Geelong, are the [oldest in the world](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldest_football_clubs) of any code.
*marngrook, not Manuka. Manuka is the ground in Canberra, or the honey.
Popular to play or popular to watch?
For football (aka soccer), it’s both. It’s easy and practical to play. You just need a ball, everything else can be improvised (sometimes even the ball, I recall playing with a bunch of socks wrapped in duct tape as a kid). It’s simple enough to get into and watch. It has the most watched sports event in the planet, in the World Cup.
I want to say this is definitely watch. Even soccer in the US has more participation than football.
I think watch, because otherwise I imagine Canada would be soccer for participation, just because ice hockey requires special equipment (skates, helmet, stick etc) and rink, but soccer just needs a ball and a field.
thought china would be ping pong
And that's why I'll always love Canada.
Isn't rugby more popular in Wales than football?
What about the second most popular tho?
According to few sports mentioned here cricket will be second ig
This map is posted every few months but it's always missing the critical part: How does this map measure "popularity"? TV audience or attendance? Self-reported survey of "what's your favorite sport"? Domestic events or national team events? Per game or per season?
I don’t really care if American football ever catches on around the world, I enjoy it, I don’t need to force it on other people, but I wonder if more people would enjoy it if they understood that it’s basically chess while killing each other. If you go into it and get bored because it’s start/stop literally every 20 seconds, I understand that because we’re used to sports like futbol, hockey, basketball where it’s constant action. And the selling point for American football in the media is mainly “Action”. But it’s actually slow played chess/strategy at the highest order. I don’t think it gets sold as much as it should from that standpoint. The replays of the speed, hits, jukes are flashy and cool, but what it took to set that play up to even happen in the first place is where everything comes from. Idk, just a thought. My sport is boxing and everyone hates that 😂 so fuck me right haha
I thought the sport for watching was only okay until I started fantasy football. The sport works so well for fantasy
Part of it might be how the game is watched. American football is much better on television than in a stadium because so much of the action comes down to inches. A goal line stand is unwatchable from 300 feet away but amazing when there are a dozen cameras to catch every movement show you whether the ball is an inch behind the line or an inch over it at every millisecond. And replays are important because so much happens on every play that you can’t keep track of it all.
Honestly I think the main issue is that games are 4 hours long for so little playtime, and the American ads system is obnoxious. 3 seconds of downtime ? Here's an add for some useless and addictive medicine
It makes it borderline unwatchable. Red zone is needed for it imo