With five major leagues and big college leagues, sports are an integral part of the United States culture and identity.
The NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, and MLS are the five major leagues that dominate the North American sports landscape. The two largest and most popular leagues are the NFL and NBA.
Both are high energy and exciting, and they get just about everyone passionate.
While we may love the competition, the teams, the players, and the salary of LeBron James, in reality, making it professional is hard. Those who do certainly reap the rewards with salaries that will make your jaw drop.
The National Football League (NFL) is the most popular league in the US so let us look at it first.
As of 2014, around 1,087,000 high school boys played football in the US, which is about 500,000 more participants than the next highest played sport, which is track and field.
After high school, amateur football gets popular with viewers. According to footballfoundation.org, in 2012, 216 million people tuned into college football’s regular season, with even more for championship games.
Those that are not watching it on TV are probably in the stands, as supporting your school is non-negotiable.
Even if you are not a big fan many will still take time out of there day to watch the Super Bowl – or at least the advertisements. The 2015 Super Bowl set a US television record of 114.4 million viewers, with millions and millions watching regular season.
It does not get much better than wings, sports, and beer.
From a young age, football is an important and treasured sport. Surprisingly, even with its large viewership and multi-million dollar advertisement industry, the NFL has the second lowest yearly average salary out of the five major leagues.
$1.9 million with an average career length of 3.5 years gives the average NFL player $6.7 million in career earnings before endorsements.
The National Basketball League (NBA), one of my favourite leagues, is the second most popular league in America.
Like football, it attracts many children from a young age. Around 500,000 high school boys play basketball.
College basketball is a big deal too, especially March Madness. Betting during the tournament week has some people in tears and others in tears of joy.
According to NCAA, the March Madness tournament averaged 11.3 million total viewers in 2015.
In addition, the 2015 NBA finals broke all 2014 viewership records, with the Game 6 audience peaking at 28.7 million.
In addition to the constant time outs, NBA players also have the largest average salary. An annual salary of $5.15 million and a 4.8-year career length leaves the average player with $24.7 million in career earnings.
The NFL and NBA are the two most prominent leagues in America but three other leagues evoke the same feelings and pay millions.
Major League Baseball has average career earnings at $17.9 million, the second highest. The National Hockey League sits at $13.3 million, placing it in third place.
Finally, Major League Soccer has average career earnings at $500,000, which places it far below any of the other league salaries.
While some American sports are not known to many outside the States, they are well supported and entail some of the biggest sporting events in the world each year.
Glenn Innes
Guest
The history of US sport is not as stable as Australian sport (so kind of more interesting).Back in the fifties the big three sports were baseball, boxing and horse racing and baseball was the big one of the big three, absolute king. Football was a college sport with a sclerotic pro league, and pro basketball was only in it's infancy with a handful of teams, neither of these sports were anywhere near the big three, it was colour tv that changed everything and football and later basketball took off. but that was late sixties, seventies not the fifties and it was eighties before football really knocked of baseball. Just over a million participants in a nation of over three hundred million, that is a tiny participation level in comparison to Australian sport .Australian Rules has about 500,000 Rugby League about 300.000 Soccer about one million, no wonder Americans are so fat, they like watching sport but they obviously don't like playing it (or more likely the figures are corrupted by only including high school participation)Baseball and soccer are not so school based and my guess is they would be the two biggest participant sports.(softball would have pretty big numbers also I would imagine)
no one in particular
Roar Guru
what is wrong?
pat malone
Guest
i am sorry but that is wrong
Tigranes
Guest
In the 1990s, basketball was supposed to knock off football as No. 1, however if anything, I reckon the NBA has shrunk and would put it behind baseball now. Im not sure if MLS is in the big leagues either, both MLS and NHL are more niche followings. What I enjoy about US sports though is that people support multiple teams in different sports, you go to the UK, people only support their soccer team pretty much.
Niall
Guest
I think its similar to Australia in a way but on a bigger scale and without the code war nonsense. You can go to different parts of America and different cities are obsessed with different sports and teams. You're right though, the NFL is the big fish in the USA.
no one in particular
Roar Guru
NFL is the most popular sport in the United States, followed by MLB, then College Football. Then comes Nascar and then the NBA. College hoops trails mens soccer and ice hockey.