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Comment by southphillyman | Hacker News Reader

Never listened to these guys but what's described sounds like your typical NBA podcast nowadays. NBA discussion on message boards and forums has changed a lot in recent years with fans being very knowledgeable about the salary cap, trade provisions, and other general management intricacies. in fact there is a derogatory term for fans who don't know about the nuances of the CBA or how to calculate effective field goal percentage...we call them "casuals". The NBA has done a good job developing an intelligent involved fan base which remains engaged even when games aren't being played

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That it is MUCH easier to follow NBA than Baseball and Football due to sheer numbers of people is also a big plus. You actually can easily know every regular player (Usually 10 players or less) very quickly. It is also very easy to understand the impact of different players subing in and out.

Basketball is the most played sport in the world for the past 20+ years (Arguably) and I think in 30 years NBA will be the second biggest sport in the US and it already is 2nd in the world.

There’s simply no way that a sport that requires a court and a hoop is going to beat Soccer as the most played sport in the world.

Soccer definitely has the breadth of places played locked down. Nothing is likely to overtake that any time soon.

But basketball has a surprising advantage in potential players in that China is mad about basketball. The last time I was there the enthusiasm I saw for the sport, especially with young players rivaled anything I’ve seen outside of my own basketball obsessed childhood home of Indiana.

Which leads to another conclusion. If I were betting the most popular sport globally I’d probably bet on Ping Pong, just based on Chinese school children participation.

> Soccer definitely has the breadth of places played locked down. Nothing is likely to overtake that any time soon.

> But basketball has a surprising advantage in potential players in that China is mad about basketball. The last time I was there the enthusiasm I saw for the sport, especially with young players rivaled anything I’ve seen outside of my own basketball obsessed childhood home of Indiana.

> Which leads to another conclusion. If I were betting the most popular sport globally I’d probably bet on Ping Pong, just based on Chinese school children participation.

Basketball flat out isn't. Every single adult male in China could play it and it still wouldn't be the most popular sport in the world.

Your suggesting that there is a sport out there right now that more than 10% of the global population plays?

Cause Soccer certainly isn’t played at that scale.

currently plays obv you're right, but played ever? i bet it's over 10%. youth soccer participation is over 50% in most of europe and north america and while it's hard to find statistics for africa and south america for organized play for casual play i would be shocked if it was lower than the organized play rate for north america

> But basketball has a surprising advantage in potential players in that China is mad about basketball.

You ignore all the players in China that are mad about Soccer.

I think the conversation about most popular sports in the world almost always ignores the size of India & China.

If any sport takes over in those places it basically rockets to the top of the list (thus cricket which is a marginal sport most places is very popular globally based on Indian participation).

So you can say my bet on basketball is not ignoring Chinese soccer participants it’s just a bet that basketball will outstrip soccer in China.

I don't think you have any idea what you're talking about.

An estimated 700 million people watched the 2006 finals of the FIFA World Cup. In 2014 the entire tournament was watched by an estimated four billion people and that's just one event.

Unless the Chinese population explodes to 5 billion people overnight and they ALL start watching basketball, the two sports aren't even in the same league.

Football's wildly popular, but spectator numbers are a non-argument for that. How many people have seen Michael Schumacher drive or Conor McGregor fight? Neither is indicative of how many are participating in race car driving or MMA themselves.

The last FIFA census estimated that there are 265 million people playing in organized games with 5 million referees. The number of people who play pickup soccer games is much, much higher.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sport_in_China

The Chinese Basketball Association puts the player count in China at 300 million today.

Almost 200 million people watched a single non-championship basketball game in 2007.

That’s the thing, people just completely misunderstand the scale of China (and India).

When talking about population based stats the rest of the world doesn’t matter.

Indeed, football is popular and that's an actual number supporting that. I was pointing out that your initial citation of viewership was a non-argument, as you can trivially name (as I did) various sports with amazing viewership & almost zero actual public participation. There's no clear relationship between the two.

Same league? They're not even the same sport.

Soccer, which requires a ball, doesn't stand a chance against running and boxing...

I can look out my window in Chicago and see a milk crate hung on a telephone poll & kids playing.

Meanwhile I suspect even though regulation soccer requires a lot of space, you’ll be able to find a pickup game in very space constrained places like Rio.

That is, I don’t find the equipment argument very compelling on either side.

You can still play with a cheap ball. And in case of emergency you can fashion a ball out of a bunch of old socks. Soccer can be very flexible :)

I’m not sure how you’re drawing your metrics, but football/soccer is the most played and popular sport in the world—by a long shot, for more than 20 years. Basketball is, I believe, the fastest growing sport in the world, judging by number of players, teams, and revenue. However, it still lags about a billion followers behind cricket.

11% of the world plays Basketball. http://www.espn.com/blog/truehoop/post/_/id/19814/is-basketb...

In saying the most popular sport in the world I am talking about what people participate in the sport. There have been a strong argument that while Football/Soccer is the most watched sport in areas where it is played the vast majority o players are under 14 and due to economical factors the adult populations do not have time for leisure.

Also people don't understand how global basketball has become the last 20 years (I really think it is tanks to the Dream Team of 1992). Right now in the U.K. for under 25 year olds Basketball has replaced football as the most played sport there. Also for places with bad weather it is easy to play basketball inside.

I don't think you understand how popular soccer has always been, everywhere.

The last FIFA census estimated that there are 265 million people playing in organized games with 5 million referees. We're not even talking about pickup games - which is what the research in your link is about (I'll ignore the quality of research methodology for now) - we're talking about organized leagues. The number of people who play pickup soccer games is much, much higher.

There is no way 11% of the world population plays basketball.

I tried to find the original source so I could check the methodology and couldn't - but i'd guess that a telephone survey of 35,000 people being extrapolated out to the entire world population leads to bad results

The second part of that statement - that Basketball is the most popular sport in Australia - is verifiably false as the governments own data shows it at only the 7th most popular[0]

[0] http://theworldgame.sbs.com.au/article/2017/04/28/football-a...

This is very America-centric. Basketball isn’t even that popular in other western countries, is popular in China, but meaningless on the Indian subcontinent, Africa and South America compared to football. Even the China thing is a stretch.

Most played sport in the world? It doesn't even come close to football (soccer).

These guys are probably THE podcast when it comes to numbers.

Sure fans are educated, but I've listened to a lot of NBA podcasts and while lots of them bring up salary numbers, these guys get into the nitty gritty of the CBA quite a bit more than the typical NBA pod.

You should. Their pod is BY far the best for hoops junkies.

I gave them a listen after reading this article and listened to their last podcast breaking down the Rockets vs. Cavs game etc. Added to the rotation!

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