Most popular global sports events 2021, by peak search volume

In 2021, the National Basketball Association (NBA) was the sports event with the highest maximum monthly search volume, reaching 185 million Google searches at its peak. The second most popular sports event was the UEFA 2020, with 151 million Google searches. Users also searched online for the term “Champions League,” which recorded a peak of 55.6 million searches. The popular South American football championship Copa América also saw high interest, generating over 83 million Google searches.

Level of interest in NBA

As of 2021, the Philippines was the country with the largest NBA fanbase, as more than 60 percent of the respondents shared that they were interested in the National Basketball Association. China followed, with 38 percent of respondents in the country reporting to be NBA fans. Meanwhile, the shares of male and female global respondents reporting to follow the North American basketball league were 38 percent and 28 percent, respectively.

EURO 2020 and the pandemic

In 2020, the annual UEFA Champions League was postponed due to the global Covid-19 situation and took place in the summer of 2021. The delay was not the only disruption that fans had to experience due to the global pandemic. In Spain, 60 percent of respondents found not fair for a match to automatically forfeit in case of a lack of players due to COVID-19. Additionally, around 90 percent of the EURO 2020 fans in France thought that it was important that fans attended the matches of the tournament to support their team.