Christina Gough
Research expert covering sports and video gaming
Sporting events in the U.S. - statistics & facts
Sporting events in the United States are about much more than what happens during the game. Whether it be Thanksgiving or Christmas, many major cultural holidays in the U.S. are defined by sport, with Super Bowl Sunday even becoming a de facto holiday in itself. It is therefore no surprise that the vast majority of the 100 most watched TV broadcasts in the United States in the past years were sports broadcasts. On top of the list in terms of number of broadcasts was the National Football League, with the sport also emerging as the most popular sport watched on TV in the U.S. in 2024.
In recent years, the women's tournament has also boomed in popularity thanks to breakout stars such as Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese. Indeed, the average TV audience of the women's tournament in 2024 was more than double that of a year prior. With this increasing popularity of women's sport and the long-standing domination of men's professional sport in the cultural and TV landscape of the United States, sporting events will continue to play a dominant role in American society.
The Super Bowl
As the annual championship game of the NFL, the Super Bowl is one of the biggest sporting events in the United States. TV viewership of the Super Bowl has reached new heights in recent years, with the 2024 edition, in which the Kansas City Chiefs beat the San Francisco 49ers, being watched by a record of over 123 million viewers in the United States. With the event followed closely by millions across the nation, broadcasting agencies have a lot to gain from the highly contested commercial spots. In 2024, for example, the average cost of a 30-second Super Bowl TV commercial was about seven million U.S. dollars. Meanwhile, revenue from Super Bowl advertising hit 600 million U.S. dollars for the first time in 2023.The World Series
The World Series is the final series of games played to determine the champion of Major League Baseball in the United States. The sporting event attracts hundreds of thousands of fans annually, with more than 250 thousand attendees at the World Series in 2024, which was contested between the New York Yankees and the Los Angeles Dodgers. Meanwhile, millions followed the games on TV, with approximately 14.34 million viewers on average for the World Series games that year. Despite losing the championship series in 2024, the New York Yankees remain the most successful franchise in MLB history, having won the World Series championship 27 times between 1903 and 2024.March Madness
The NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament, more commonly known as March Madness, is a single-elimination tournament organized annually to determine the best college basketball teams from Division I of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). In total, almost 710 thousand supporters attended men's March Madness games in 2024, with tournament games watched by almost ten million viewers on average. When asked about the platform they would like to use to watch March Madness in the U.S., almost half of respondents identified that they used cable or satellite TV, whereas 14 percent preferred to stream games on a phone or tablet.In recent years, the women's tournament has also boomed in popularity thanks to breakout stars such as Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese. Indeed, the average TV audience of the women's tournament in 2024 was more than double that of a year prior. With this increasing popularity of women's sport and the long-standing domination of men's professional sport in the cultural and TV landscape of the United States, sporting events will continue to play a dominant role in American society.
