It’s no secret that Americans love watching sports. We crave it. Dedicate nights of the week to it. Plan parties with cute finger-food snacks around it. And get genuinely ticked off when our favorite team loses (permission to be in a bad mood for the month: granted).
Because DIRECTV makes watching live sports just as good (or better) as seeing them live, we at USDirect crunched the numbers to determine the most-watched sports in America (football by a landslide, if you were wondering), and which states watch more sports than others.
Fun Facts
- First things first: football. Football took first as the overall favorite sport, with 35 states showing more interest in it than the other seven sports we looked at. Golf came in second with 13 states.
- Kentucky is the only state more interested in basketball than all other sports. They’re also home to the most successful NCAA Division I basketball program in history in terms of both all-time wins and all-time winning percentage (go Wildcats!).
- West Virginia watches more TV per person than any other state, with a daily average watch-time of four and a half hours.
- South Dakota has the highest average interest in sports but came in 12th overall.
- Hawaii comes in dead last with a 49th place rank in interest in both TV/movies and sports, and a 46th place rank for TV watch-time. With so many beautiful beaches to lounge on and things to do, we can’t say we’re surprised
Methodology
Rankings were calculated based on three metrics: TV watch-time, interest of a household in sports, and interest of a household in TV/movies. Data was sourced from product purchases, subscriptions, and surveys. These metrics were weighted equally to determine a final rank.
Each state’s favorite sport was then taken from the average household interest in eight popular sports (baseball, basketball, football, golf, hockey, skiing, soccer, and tennis).
| State | Rank: Love to Watch Sports on TV | Favorite Sport |
|---|---|---|
| West Virginia | 1 | Football |
| Wyoming | 2 | Football |
| Pennsylvania | 3 | Football |
| North Dakota | 4 | Football |
| Delaware | 5 | Football |
| Ohio | 6 | Football |
| New Hampshire | 7 | Football |
| New Jersey | 8 | Football |
| Wisconsin | 9 | Football |
| Iowa | 10 | Football |
| Minnesota | 11 | Football |
| South Dakota | 12 | Football |
| Mississippi | 13 | Football |
| Illinois | 14 | Football |
| Michigan | 15 | Football |
| Kansas | 16 | Football |
| Louisiana | 17 | Football |
| Indiana | 18 | Football |
| Kentucky | 19 | Basketball |
| South Carolina | 20 | Football |
| Connecticut | 21 | Baseball |
| Alabama | 22 | Football |
| Arkansas | 23 | Football |
| Maryland | 24 | Golf |
| Missouri | 25 | Football |
| Oklahoma | 26 | Football |
| Nebraska | 27 | Football |
| Virginia | 28 | Football |
| Tennessee | 29 | Football |
| Georgia | 30 | Golf |
| Idaho | 31 | Football |
| Vermont | 32 | Baseball |
| Montana | 33 | Football |
| Massachusetts | 34 | Football |
| Rhode Island | 35 | Football |
| New York | 36 | Golf |
| New Mexico | 37 | Football |
| Maine | 38 | Football |
| North Carolina | 39 | Football |
| Florida | 40 | Football |
| Arizona | 41 | Golf |
| Oregon | 42 | Golf |
| Texas | 43 | Golf |
| Nevada | 44 | Golf |
| Washington | 45 | Golf |
| Utah | 46 | Golf |
| Colorado | 47 | Football |
| California | 48 | Golf |
| Alaska | 49 | Golf |
| Wasington DC | 50 | Golf |
| Hawaii | 51 | Golf |
Want to watch more football along with the rest of the nation? Catch live games and touchdowns with DIRECTV.
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