Professional football leads the pack as the most popular American sport, followed by baseball and basketball. These top three professional sports bring in $22.3 billion in annual revenues, 81% of the professional sports market. Avid Fans often follow all three (or more) traditional sports and keep up with their favorite teams by watching sports news, reading articles online, and even scanning the local paper. Whichever channel fans choose to keep up with the sports world, news stories about the safety of players, doping scandals, and bad behavior of athletes may negatively affect their perceptions of professional leagues.

For the purposes of this Report, Mintel categorizes respondents based on their level of engagement with sports:

• Sports Fan: Someone who follows sports (net of Avid Fans, Casual Fans, and Occasional Fans).

• Avid Fan: Someone who almost never misses his/her team’s game/event, for at least one of the sports evaluated.

• Casual Fan: Someone who watches at least half of his/her team’s games/events, for at least one of the sports evaluated.

• Occasional Fan: Someone who occasionally watches games/events for at least one of the sports evaluated.

• Non-fan: Someone who does not follow any of the sports evaluated.

Analysis is based on Sports Fans. The terms “major sports” and “traditional sports” refer to the following:

• Professional football

• Professional baseball

• Professional basketball

• Professional hockey

• Professional tennis

• Professional golf

• Professional auto racing

• Professional soccer

• College football

• College basketball