Which Sports Do Americans Follow?

For years, we’ve been saying the number one reason why sports fans come to visit your bar is to watch sports. But which sports? Unless you’ve polled your own guests or done some sales vs. games analysis, you’re probably running more on gut instinct.

Instinct is good, but instinct backed with some data is even better.

Recently, Statista ran a survey with American sports fans on what professional sports they follow. Mind you, what the national average is might not match up with what happens locally, so definitely do your own due diligence, but this info is a nice starting point.

You will find more infographics at Statista

Football is King

Unsurprisingly, football remains America’s favorite sport to watch, dominating the survey with 75% favorability among the survey participants. And while just having the games available to show will bring in guests, and telling guests what you can show is even better, if you want to stand out from all the other sports bars showing the NFL & NCAA in your area, you need to go the full 10 yards.

A few ideas to get started:

• Schedule viewing/watch parties for your team(s) of choice for the really big matchups, like local rivalries or primetime events.
• Form Fan Clubs for your preferred team(s). Have folks register to be part of the fan club at your bar, giving them special discounts and offers for watching the games at your location.
• Design some gameday menus that are easy to execute at high-volumes.

If you need help marketing football to your guests, you may be interested in our Football Marketing Bootcamp video seminar.

Rounding out the Top 3 are the usual suspects – basketball (57%) and baseball (51%). Perhaps a little surprising to some is that boxing (23%) edges out hockey (21%) for the fourth spot.

In fact, according to the survey, soccer outranks hockey for sports Americans regularly follow, so operators should look for ways of showing more MLS and national-level games.

Tennis Has Lost its Glimmer

While tennis has been grabbing a lot of headlines in the run-up to the US Open, it no longer captures the imagination of sports fans the way it did in its heyday, when players like John McEnroe, Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras were among the biggest athletes in the world.

With Serena Williams, the last American superstar is about to bow out, leaving a void that will be hard to fill for the next generation of players. On the men’s side of the game, no American has won a Grand Slam since Andy Roddick triumphed in New York in 2003, leaving American tennis fans no choice but to cheer on Roger Federer for the better part of the past two decades.

Don’t Forget About eSports

Although not counting in Statista’s “professional sports” survey, operators shouldn’t assume there’s no room or interest for eSports at your bar. Competitive eSports is a multi-billion dollar market with more than 500 million fans. The live tournaments and events get absolutely packed by fans and online streams gets millions of views.

Data also shows that nontraditional sports, like eSports, are far more interesting to Millennials with 56% favoring them, and only 44% saying the same for traditional sports. Meanwhile, 32% of Gen Z say they’d rather watch eSports instead of traditional professional sports – stats that have been pretty consistent for a while now as interest in traditional sports with Gen Z is lower than other generations. So, if you’re looking to bring in newer and younger guests, turn to eSports.

You can download our Winning with eSports for Sports Bars free guide.