@EinsteinsHund made an interesting observation in another Game Room thread that the popular one-mile-run track-&-field event is generally only contested in the Anglosphere. In contrast, the Olympic Games, the World Athletics Championships, and other major international outdoor track and field competitions feature only metric-distance races (excepting the marathon).
What’s interesting about it is that if you’re living in the US (and I presume Canada and the UK, too?), and you follow track-&-field even casually, the one-mile run is still considered a major event. There are still famous (to fans of the sport) one-mile runs in the US such as the indoor Wanamaker Mile and the outdoor Fifth Avenue Mile among several others. I believe that the one-mile-run at the London Diamond Games – where Josh Kerr set a new one-mile-run world record earlier today – is a well-renowned premier event in the UK.
Anyway, there are surely other sporting events like this: If you live in a given country or in a given language “sphere” … there is probably one or more sporting events that are big deals in the culture, but that when you leave that nation or that culture, that same sporting event kind of “disapears”. No media coverage, no attention paid, none of that.
This is different than a niche sport that’s played in one place, but is niche even there. For instance, the ancient Mayan ball game Pok Ta Pok has been revived and is starting to have organized competition (versus exhibitions), but I don’t believe it yet has much of a profile on the Mexican sports landscape.
The top-of-the-head examples of the concept I can come up with are Australian Rules Football (plenty of media coverage in Australia) and Gaelic Football in Ireland. What else is out there that’s in this category?
Well, if you’re going to include Australian and Gaelic football, then you surely should include American football, too. It’s certainly popular here, one of the Big Three, but only niche at best everywhere else.
There’s also Canadian football, which is slightly different, but I don’t know how big that is in Canada.
Good point – the fish doesn’t regard the water in which it swims. FWIW (not a ton right now), there are professional American football leagues in South America and Europe. But definitely not with the cultural impact NCAA and NFL football have in the US.
I could be wrong, but I think of the CFL as Canada’s second most popular television sport behind ice hockey. MLB is much loved in Toronto, I’m sure, but it might be different not having major-league teams in several Canadian markets as the CFL has.
EDIT: Actually, the American NFL has some following in Canada as well. Any chance NFL outdraws the CFL on television? I’ve got to step out, but I will track that down later on.
Buzkashi I think is unique to Afghanistan or at least that region.
Buzkashi (Persian: بزکشی, lit. ‘goat pulling’) is the national sport of Afghanistan.[1] It is a traditional sport in which horse-mounted players attempt to place a goat or calf carcass in a goal. Similar games are known as kokpar,[2]kupkari,[3] and ulak tartysh[4] in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.[5]
Ssireum is Korean wrestling. Not sure it is done anywhere else.
Excellent example. Sumo is right in that sweet spot – big in Japan (groan) and with enough of a profile that people all over the world at least know it exists. But inextricable linked with Japanese culture.
Interestingly, in the last few decades, the number of non-Japanese Sumo has increased markedly. It kind of reminds me of how the prominence of Latin American baseball players in MLB changed from, say, 1950-1990. And now, where Japanese players in MLB were once a novelty, how many Japanese players are in the NL + AL now? Measured in the dozens, perhaps (I follow much less closely since ~20 years ago)?
Kabaddi in India and Pakistan. Sepak takraw (the ancestor of hacky sack) and giant top spinning in Malaysia. Hurley in Ireland. Sambo in Russia. Face slapping fights in Russia.
Also Kho-Kho. Which I played a lot as a kid growing up. But never knew it as an organized sport.
I watched a lot of kabaddi growing up. In fact in terms of live sport, that’s the one I watched the most. Lots of local competitions with teams from various [impoverished] neighborhoods of the city competing.
It certainly is more popular in Japan than elsewhere, but the article you link talks about sumo around the world. There are even European and world sumo championship tournaments.
American Football is also very popular and is a big High School sport in the Mexican areas that border the US but that’s a big of a nitpick. I just mention it because I learned this when I was consulting in Mexico and was surprised to learn that.
It’s a major sport everywhere that ever did or does still answer to the British Crown. In much of the well-off world used to 100 channels of sports it’s known of, but not played. (With some exception for club-level games composed mostly of expats from the traditional cricket countries)
I’d expect cricket to be pretty much unknown in other parts of the world, e.g. the poorer regions of Latin America or the parts of Africa and Asia that were never UK colonies.
Is it? My perception is that cricket is big in the UK itself, India, Pakistan, and to a lesser extent in Australia and New Zealand. That’s a lot of people, but not everywhere that used to be a part of the British empire.
The Ashes is probably the most famous national cricket rivalry ever. It’s a biennial match that’s been played since 1882 excluding the World War years.
To a lesser extent in Australia and New Zealand??? Isn’t cricket more popular in Australia and New Zealand than any of the UK countries? I’m guessing it’s a solid #2 behind Aussie Rules and Rugby Union in Oz and NZ.
It’s also popular in Bangladesh, South Africa, Zimbabwe, the West Indies, Sri Lanka.
To a lesser extent might apply to Kenya, Nepal, Uganda. And it’s an expat sport in UAE, Singapore and Hong Kong, but a lot of participants, plus of course Canada and the US.
I didn’t know about that. I was coming at it from the perspective of which sport is the biggest in any given country. In other words, my guess is (and as a non-Australian I clearly don’t know for sure) is that cricket occupies a similar spot in Australia that baseball does here in the US. Yes, it’s popular, but it’s not the most popular sport. As opposed to India and Pakistan, where it’s the most popular sport, analogous to how baseball is the most popular sport in Japan and South Korea (although I understand soccer is coming close to overtaking baseball in the latter, or may already have).
That’s not what the OP is asking though. It is asking about sports that are only popular in a niche area, not that they must be the most popular only that they are very popular.
