2012-13 global audience of world's sport teams

[Marla_Singer]

Important notice: these figures don't mean anything about popularity or fanbase.

Out of curiosity, I got the idea to check the traffic on Wikipedia for articles related to the most famous sport clubs and franchises. Indeed, Wikipedia is plurilingual which makes the thing more interesting as it reduces the language barriers. Of course, Wikipedia page views depend on who's making the news but it can still give a good hint about global audience in a limited timespan.

As a result, don't be surprized to see current champions scoring better than classical teams having a historical huge fanbase.

Here's the list of Wikipedia articles about sport teams which generated the most page views from May 2012 to April 2013 in 10 languages: English, Spanish, German, French, Portuguese, Italian, Japanese, Chinese and Arabic. The percentage gives the proportion of readership between languages. I find the result quite interesting.

I've tested some other team sports such as Ice Hockey, Cricket, Aussie rule, Rugby or Handball. None of them make it in the top 75. Anyway I won't comment this list, that's your part of the job!

May 2012 - April 2013 Wikipedia articles page views in 10 languages


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[ummmm........]

No college football

OTOH, data!

 

[Marla_Singer]

No college football

OTOH, data!

Most articles about NCAA teams exist only in English. I haven't tested all of them but despite good ratings in English, those I've checked were all below 1 million views.

Here's what I got (it's not at all a complete list) :

• Notre Dame Fighting Irish (Gridiron): 802,029 views
• Alabama Crimson Tide (Gridiron): 637,683 views
• Kentucky Wildcats (Basketball): 342,371 views
• LSU Tigers (Gridiron): 256,258 views
• Kansas Jayhawks (Basketball): 242,072
• UCLA Bruins (Basketball): 169,072

NCAA sports audience seems to be very domestic in the US.

 

[Quackers]

1.5m views for Southampton FC

I'm surprised!

 

[schlaufuchs]

Woohoo! SF Giants one of only 2 baseball teams to make the list.

I'd say the top two are to be expected given:

a) The Yankees are probably the only baseball team in the MLB with any kind of international audience/notoriety

b) The SF Giants have won 2 WS in the last 3 years and they operate in a very tech-friendly environment, which is why they also consistently send way more all-stars than they probably deserve.

 

[Marla_Singer]

1.5m views for Southampton FC

I'm surprised!

I was too. Of course it's common knowledge that English Premier League attracts a global audience but I clearly didn't expect 14 of its 20 teams to get into that global top 75!

It tells a lot about globalization in sport. The Japanese version of Southampton FC article has been read 185,000 times during last year. This figure looked abnormal compared to other teams of that importance and then I realized a Japanese player, Maya Yoshida, was part of the team.

Of course the EPL has wide viewership in English, but what makes it so high is that it's also true in the 9 other languages. I remember 10 years ago when French people were laughing at Manchester United marketing itself in the US, Saudi Arabia or China, but look how famous they are today. EPL is broadcasted worldwide whereas French Ligue 1 is only a local league. Once again, History proved the Brits right.

 

[Loppan Torkel]

I would've thought that the view count would be higher over a year. Of course, I've no idea how widespread Wikipedia is in other parts of the world..


Nice that the US:ers finally found a name for the game 'Gridiron'. Good choice


Edit: I think one large part of why American teams are missing is that they often have good and easily findable websites - nhl.com, nba.com, nfl.com etc.

 

[Marla_Singer]

Woohoo! SF Giants one of only 2 baseball teams to make the list.

I'd say the top two are to be expected given:

a) The Yankees are probably the only baseball team in the MLB with any kind of international audience/notoriety

b) The SF Giants have won 2 WS in the last 3 years and they operate in a very tech-friendly environment, which is why they also consistently send way more all-stars than they probably deserve.

The Red Sox are there too... but below the Giants.

Indeed, you're correct. The San Francisco Giants are there because they are the current World series champions.

Overall, I believe American sports are lower than some could have hoped mostly because of their number. There are multiple sport leagues in the US which all have their strengthes and weaknesses, whereas elsewhere soccer/football rules as the undisputed king.

NFL is the most popular sport in the US, but the league hardly has any international attention besides the superbowl (and the highest-ranked NFL teams are both which participated to the last Superbowl). Basketball isn't the biggest sport in the US but the NBA is undoubtedly the most popular worldwide. Baseball has some international attention, especially in Japanese, and Ice Hockey has also a bit international attention, especially in Russian, but that wasn't enough to make it into the list.

In Europe, everything is about football. I've taken a guick glance about European cricket, rugby, basketball and hockey teams but they are all ridiculously low. It just can't be compared.

In the same way, Australia has too much sports and not enough people to make any of its team a contender. On the other side, I was really amazed about Indian cricket teams, such as the Kolkata Knight Riders, which have about 600,000 views in English, but don't even exist in other languages (besides Hindi, Bengali, Urdu,Tamil... but with low viewership).

 

[Marla_Singer]

I would've thought that the view count would be higher over a year. Of course, I've no idea how widespread Wikipedia is in other parts of the world..

Yes. Viewership figures aren't really impressive, but that's about the same in all languages. Some languages are still under-represented, especially Chinese and Arabic, but that's another thing.

This proves that people don't check the wikipedia article to get their daily sports news (there are many specialized website worldwide for that), they do so to get deeper informations about teams... their history, context and so on.

Nice that the US:ers finally found a name for the game 'Gridiron'. Good choice

Gridiron is only its knickname... but as I'm a posh European, I couldn't accept calling football soccer, so I needed an alternative.

 

[Azale]

I refuse to see Dallas below Spartak Moscow! Jerry Jones better get on this!

 

[nerdfighter13]

Glad to see that the Redskins are on the list.

 

[Gucumatz]

I refuse to see Dallas below Spartak Moscow! Jerry Jones better get on this!

Moscow apparently > Dallas

Anyways, sort of surprising seeing teams like Gladbach and Hamburg still make the top 75 based more so off their historical records rather than recent form

 

[ummmm........]

Most articles about NCAA teams exist only in English. I haven't tested all of them but despite good ratings in English, those I've checked were all below 1 million views.

Here's what I got (it's not at all a complete list) :

• Notre Dame Fighting Irish (Gridiron): 802,029 views
• Alabama Crimson Tide (Gridiron): 637,683 views
• Kentucky Wildcats (Basketball): 342,371 views
• LSU Tigers (Gridiron): 256,258 views
• Kansas Jayhawks (Basketball): 242,072
• UCLA Bruins (Basketball): 169,072

NCAA sports audience seems to be very domestic in the US.

Yeah, that's what I would have expected. It sucks that the rest of you are missing out on the best thing in sport

Nice that the US:ers finally found a name for the game 'Gridiron'. Good choice

It's the name for it in the South Pacific, from what I understand. Note how I refrain from haranguing them about their local naming preferences.

Edit: I think one large part of why American teams are missing is that they often have good and easily findable websites - nhl.com, nba.com, nfl.com etc.

This was my thought. I've looked at wiki sites for sports teams that I follow, but my motivation has always been the thought "If someone knew absolutely nothing about this, what impression would they get by looking at wiki" . . .

 

[Marla_Singer]

Moscow apparently > Dallas

Dallas is actually encircled by 2 Moscow teams. It's a trap!

This was my thought. I've looked at wiki sites for sports teams that I follow, but my motivation has always been the thought "If someone knew absolutely nothing about this, what impression would they get by looking at wiki" . . .

What you say is also true for footie teams and most of those in the list have plurilingual websites which isn't the case for most US teams site which are English only.

If people would check Wikipedia for dailynews, viewership would be in billions not millions. Wikipedia readership is really focused on people trying to find deeper information than those regarding current news, and this no matter the sport and the language.

As I've said, American sport is split in various leagues whereas all attention is captured only on football elsewhere. New York City has the Yankees, the Mets, the Nets, the Knicks, the Giants, the Jets, the Rangers, the Islanders, the Red Bulls, the Cosmos... if you'd sum them all up NYC would be very high, probably second only after London.

 

[ummmm........]

When I'm searching for depth for my favorite team, I go with rolltide.com, Alabama's official website.
They have stats & info back to 1892, which is good enough for me. When I'm looking for historical
stats for another college football team I go with cfbdatawarehouse.com, which is pretty good, but
not quite as awesome. When I'm looking for more detailed current stats I like cfbstats.com. When
I'm looking for an amusing anecdote about how someone has hacked a wikipage about some current
pop culture icon, I look at wiki . . .

 

[Marla_Singer]

Of course, I'm just saying that's the same everywhere. No one looks at Wikipedia for footie in Europe either. The overall low viewership proves it.

Just check the numbers, FC Barcelona is only at 10 million views. That's nothing! FC Barcelona has 42 million fans on Facebook alone:
https://www.facebook.com/fcbarcelona

I haven't noticed any abnormal trafic from any specific language. Overall, things looked balanced enough to make me think it was interesting and thus was worth being posted.

 

[ummmm........]

Definitely interesting

 

[Lambert Simnel]

Very interesting numbers, even with all of the obvious qualifications. As you say, Marla, the level of dominance of the English Premier League is frightening. It almost feels that any team in the EPL attracts interest regardless of accomplishments.

I'm surprised that both the Glasgow teams are up so high (in the top 32, ahead of the likes of the Yankees, Cowboys, OM...). Neither Celtic nor Rangers has managed the same sort of extravagant courting of the American and Asian markets that Man U, Chelsea and Liverpool have indulged in over the last 15 years, but yet the Glasgow pair are up there. Scotland easily the best represented small country?

 

[Arwon]

Gridiron is only its knickname... but as I'm a posh European, I couldn't accept calling football soccer, so I needed an alternative.

Gridiron also refers to Canadian Football, I believe. I also find it interesting that "football" is the posh term when the word soccer is originally from Oxford!

In this country it's pretty dicey calling anything "football" since we have four different things that can be called football.

Just out of curiosity did you check if any national sides would break in to the list, or did you just look at club sides?