FAKE RONJAN!!Sports fans by age: a quick look
Public Policy Polling recently asked a sample of people about their fandom of different sports, crossing that by their political affiliation, age, gender, and race. There are some interesting nuggets that I found, including the following:
- 34% of people somehow think that Michael Jordan could be LeBron James, today, one-on-one. That is a baffling rate of insanity.
- Tiger Woods's favorability is very split across political lines. He has a 74-19 favorability-to-unfavorability score among Democrats. He's in the red, 36-53, among Republicans.
- People who describe themselves as "very liberal" are just as likely to be NFL fans as everyone else. I would have thought that the anti-NFL movement would have progressive leanings.
The most interesting splits, though, were those asked by age. They grouped respondents into four buckets -- ages 18-29, ages 30-45, ages 46-65, and ages 66+. For each group, they asked which sports people were fans of, with the options being NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, boxing, and golf. (No soccer or college sports?!) I took these results and calculated a "share of fans" metric so that each age group's fandom added up to 100%.
Here's what that looks like:
If we read left to right, older fans are more likely to be into baseball and golf, while younger fans are more likely to be into basketball and boxing. None of this should be surprising to most people, but what makes it more interesting is the crossover points:
- The NBA is #4, below golf, for the oldest age group. It surpasses MLB into the #2 spot for younger age groups.
- The NHL seems to have peaked among Gen Xers, as it appears to have lost momentum with ages 18-29.
- Is golf inherently a sport for older people, or is the sport in trouble in terms of attracting new viewers?
- Does baseball need to get used to the #3 spot?
Any thoughts?
-rj