This weekend, the Kansas City Chiefs will take on the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl LVII. But who is watching? Who are the fans? And where do they live?
First, let’s look at sports fans across the board. Using the 2021 MRI-Simmons Doublebase survey, we added together the “average” and “super” fans for each of the major annual sports. The popularity of football is pretty clear. The Olympics draw the largest audience, though this might be due to the novelty of the events, as they happen only every few years and people watch for patriotic purposes. Football, by far, dominates the rest of the list, as the NFL and College Football are the next two most popular sports in the United States.
But who are those fans? We cross-tabulated a series of NFL related attributes against our Panorama segmentation system. We see that the biggest fans are from segment 6, Best of Both Worlds, and the segment with the least fans is 55, Hollows and Hills.
The map below shows where these fans are located, with the bright red areas having the most fans. It isn’t surprising that the major urban centers have a lot of fans, because this is where the teams are located. There is a very strong presence in the Northeast from Washington to Boston, Chicago-Milwaukee, and Minneapolis-St Paul. Note that the differences between the biggest and smallest fan bases is very small, as NFL is pretty much universally popular. Overall, across the country, the range of NFL fan adults is from about 30% to 60%.
What about those that are going to the game, not just watching on TV?
Once again, we turned to Panorama to determine which NFL fans are attending playoff games in person. While the sample size of those that attend is small, so interpret with some caution. For example, 44% of segment 3 adults watch the Super Bowl, but only 0.7% of segment 61 adults attend. Top and bottom 5 segments for watching playoffs/Super Bowl on TV versus attending in Person:
So, will you be watching the game this weekend, and who are you cheering for?
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