Do you want to be the first one on the block to know the stats-on the American sports fan? You can find all this information in the ESPN Sports Poll/SGMA State of Sports Report (2003 edition), released by SGMA International. This survey examines interest and viewership numbers for 18 sports categories-from Major League Baseball to college football to boxing to extreme sports.

The ESPN State of Sports is based on a random sampling of monthly interviews with 1,800 people, 12 years of age and older. Following are some of the highlights of this study.

  • Nearly half of the U.S. population enjoys watching figure skating (49.7%) and extreme sports (48.6%).
  • The National Hockey League, PGA Tour and the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) garner a greater percentage of fans with household incomes in excess of $50,000 than other sports in the poll.
  • Arena Football and Pro Wrestling have as many fans as Major League Soccer.
  • While 51% of the U.S. population likes the NBA, an even larger percentage (76%) of the 12-17 year olds watch NBA action. Figure skating, PGA and horse racing have the largest following among the 65+ age group.

  • NFL, NASCAR and college football are the sports that have the best overall retention of malefans, when comparing the number of “avid fans” to the overall fan base. On the female side, the top three are figure skating, professional wrestling, and NASCAR.

This report is available as as a PDF download or as a Kinko’s Doc Store printed copy. To order this report, please visit www.SGMA.com.