The NFL Is The Most Popular Sport In America

Every year, Harris Poll conducts market research to determine how popularity and effieciency of advertising.  One of the nice things about their research is that they can figure out and rank each sport in terms of how many people like them.  Where the NFL ranked this year shouldn’t be much of a surprise.

For the 30th year in a row, the NFL dominated the competition as shown in this article by ESPN’s Darren Rovell.

Here are the percentages of fans who call each sport their favorite teams in 2014 according to the poll:

Jun 17, 2014; Eden Prairie, MN, USA; Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson (28) talks with a reporter after practice at Winter Park. Mandatory Credit: Bruce Kluckhohn-USA TODAY Sports

35% – NFL

The last time the NFL didn’t lead in the Harris Poll as the most popular sport in America was 1984, where Major League Baseball beat out the NFL by one percentage point.  Baseball had 24 percent compared to football’s 23 percent voting.  This just goes to show how quickly the NFL has grown and became popular.

While the report doesn’t appear to be broken down in terms of the team preferences of those polled, I’m going to assume that only the most awesome and attractive folks are fans of the Minnesota Vikings.

Seriously though, this is great news for a sport that has dominated the competition for many years now and doesn’t look to be slowing down any time soon.