Survey: Football Replaces Baseball as ‘America’s Pastime’

A new survey shows that football has replaced baseball as America’s top pastime by a wide margin.

The Pew Research Center survey showed that 53 percent of those polled believed that football is now “America’s sport,” while only 27 percent said the same about baseball. The survey asked 12,000 adults the following: “If you had to choose one sport as being ‘America’s sport,’ even if you don’t personally follow it, which sport would it be?”

Only 8 percent of those polled said basketball, while only 3 percent said soccer and auto racing. Hockey stood dead last at just 1 percent behind “something else” at 2 percent. Per Fox News:

The “something else” section was the Pew Research Center allowing the surveyors to write another sport if need be. Golf, boxing, rodeo and more were written.

Furthermore, on football, the survey found that it crushed in every major demographic in the country, whether it was men and women, older and younger adults, and ethnicities like White, Black, Hispanic and Asian Americans.

Despite the strong polling, that did not mean the NFL or the NCAA enjoyed the same level of support, with a full 62 percent saying they did not closely follow professional or college sports. Of those polled, 63 percent also said they talk about sports with others “just a few times a month or less often.” Only 7 percent labeled themselves “superfans” of a given sport, meaning they talk about it often.

Last year’s Super Bowl was an epic blowout in ratings, pulling in 115.1 million viewers across all platforms, setting a new record.

“The updated numbers show that this year’s Super Bowl surpassed the previous record set in 2015 when 114.4 million people watched the Patriots beat the Seahawks in Super Bowl XLIX. The next-highest-rated telecast was Super Bowl LI in 2017 between the Patriots and Falcons, which was viewed by nearly 113.7 million,” ESPN reported last year.

Sunday’s coming Super Bowl matchup between the 49ers and the Kansas City Chiefs, two legacy teams, is expected to be a blowout in viewership.