Krav Maga in Israel?
I’d put it the other way round; everywhere that cricket is a big sport had lots of English people living there; either as a colony or otherwise.
Slapping championships are a “display of tolerance for pain designed to enliven weightlifting shows that attract mainly men… [allowing] participants to exchange single, undefended, open-palmed strikes until one of them is left unable to continue.” [1, 2]
I know that hurling is a reasonably popular television sport in Ireland. Not that my OP specified “gotta be on TV” … just that television coverage is a common way for a sport to penetrate a nation’s culture.
Those other sports you named, do they get media coverage (TV or otherwise)? If not, some may more be popular as recreational sports than TV/radio sports (cf. softball and billiards in the US).
All the ones I named have professional organized leagues. Except for face slap fights, which are less a sport than a sick joke.
Speaking of billiards (it’s sport enough for this casual thread), there are legion YouTube videos of what appears to be earnest UK television coverage of snooker. “Earnest” meaning the commentators seem to know a lot about the participants, recent competition history of the players, other goings-on in the snooker world, and so forth … as opposed to commentary that suggests the television presentation is not a regular thing.
Billiards used to get semi-regular coverage on ESPN (Cliff Nobles’ “The Horse” was the opening theme IIRC), and they did regularly have expert commentators alongside their “play-by-play” person. While you were watching the one match, the coverage was entertaining enough. But they’d never really tie it in to the wider world of the North American billiards circuit. The most they’d pan out is maybe to talk 10 seconds about the players’ previous opponents and where everyone was in the overall bracket. Most broadcasts were semi-finals or finals of high-dollar tournaments, some of which were strictly made-for-TV events. Of course pro players would come out for a shot at good prize money, but the TV tournaments didn’t have a history or a sense of grandeur. They weren’t like billiards’ version of the tennis Grand Slam or the Indianapolis 500 for open-wheel racing.
Anyway … I get the impression that UK snooker is not like that.
I don’t know what it’s like these days, but kabaddi meets would draw thousands of spectators in the 1980s. It was a poor man’s sport, so meets were local, not regional or national. Road and train travel was slow and air travel expensive.
There were only two TV channels and very little sports coverage, apart from cricket, field hockey, the Olympics and football World Cup.
Apparently now, pretty much everything is “on TV” if you include streaming. And there seem to be national and international kabaddi tournaments that I can watch on YouTube with reasonable production values.
I used to follow UK Snooker fairly closely in the 1980s but via newspaper reports. I started watching online about 15 years ago. My impression is that the game has become a lot more international now. Top players not only from Australia, but also Thailand and China.
True enough. Though even in today’s “you can find anything if you look” media environment (to include traditional print and broadcast alongside streaming/YouTube), there are variations in profile. Being available on YouTube won’t vault kabaddi past cricket in the Pakistani sports fan’s consciousness, I wouldn’t think.
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Passing thought: Is pickleball getting noticed anywhere outside the US (and maybe Canada?)? I wasn’t sure if there was such a thing as high-level organized pickleball yet, but apparently there is. Still much more of a recreational sport in the US (almost a cliche at this point for athletic middle-age folks) than a spectator sport.
Shinty, similar to hurling is big in the highlands of Scotland and gets some coverage in the low lands.
Pato, a sort of cross between polo and basketball is the national sport of Argentina (even is football (soccer) is much more popular
Tejo, is a popular sport in Columbia and involves throwing at gunpowder filled targets (!)
Pesopallo is the national sport in Finland, it is similar to baseball, it is played, as a very niche sport in a few other countries.
Probably to a greater extent than cricket, Netball is almost exclusive to countries that were in the British Empire.
While Taekwondo is common enough around the world to be an Olympic sport it is only really popular in South Korea.
From the numbers of McDojos I’ve seen, I’d say TKD is extremely popular in the US. Of course, a lot of those places are either converting to or adding the latest martial art flavor of the month, Brazilian ju-jitsu.
Wife Carrying is popular mainly in Finland, Sweden, and the Baltic nations. There are events in the US, UK, and Australia, plus other countries, but it’s clearly centered in northern Europe.
I thought about Wife Carrying, but didn’t think it counted as a sporting event. Not any more than chasing a wheel of cheese down a hill, at any rate. Probably as sporting as the Tillamook County Fair Pig & Ford races.
Both sports are part of the group of indigenous Gaelic sports, which are all promoted by the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) in Ireland. As I understand it from my friends who grew up in the Dublin area, GAA sports, particularly hurling and football, are fairly popular spectator sports, and are regularly shown on RTE (the Irish national television network).
In addition to Gaelic football and hurling, the other GAA sports are:
- Camogie (a version of hurling, played exclusively by women)
- Gaelic handball
- GAA rounders
At least as a participation sport. When I was growing up in Wisconsin in the 1970s, I took TKD lessons for several years; the studio/dojo I studied at was one of four (all privately owned, not part of a chain) in Green Bay at that time (a city of only about 100K people).
Given cricket has a world-wide following on some metrics of 5 times larger*** than baseball, one wonders why you haven’t proposed that niche USA based sport as a candidate? 
As a genuine candidate for the OP I’d nominate the decidedly non PC Calcio storico played in annually Florence between it’s four historical districts of Santa Croce (Azzurri), Santa Maria Novella (Rossi), Santo Spirito (Bianchi) and San Giovanni (Verdi)
*** Most Popular Sports Ranked By Total Fans
| Rank | Sport Name | Amount of Fans | Regions |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Football (Soccer) | 3.5 Billion | Europe, Africa, Asia, America |
| 2 | Cricket | 2.5 Billion | Asia, Australia, UK |
| 3 | Hockey | 2 Billion | Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia |
| 4 | Tennis | 1 Billion | Europe, Asia, America |
| 5 | Volleyball | 900 Million | Europe, Australia, Asia, America |
| 6 | Table Tennis | 850 Million | Europe, Africa, Asia, America |
| 7 | Basketball | 800 Million | America, Oceania, Middle East |
| 8 | Baseball | 500 Million | America, Japan |
| 9 | Rugby | 475 Million | Oceania, South Africa, England |
| 10 | Golf | 450 Million | America, Oceania, Europe |
Noting that “hockey” in this context is field hockey, not rink hockey.
And even baseball is extremely popular in some countries outside of the U.S. As your table noted, it’s very popular in Japan, as well as in South Korea, Canada, and numerous Latin and Caribbean countries, including Cuba, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and Panama.
Hijack; hidden
I would accept baseball’s substantial popularity in such diverse places including those the US wants to annexe or describes as “shit-hole” countries.
But IMHO none of sports on that list qualify for the OP’s criteria, even the more niche variant of rugby league.
Actually, the CFL is not our second-most popular TV sport. That would be a toss-up between MLB and the NFL. The CFL probably checks in somewhere behind curling, to be honest. There are a number of reasons for this, and I could go on and on about them, but I’ll spare you the boredom.
MLB is quite popular. Although there is only one team, the Toronto Blue Jays, they have done a lot to market themselves as “Canada’s Team,” and it seems to be working. Oh, there are still a few Red Sox fans in the Maritime provinces, and some Quebecers who will never support anything Toronto, but I’d say that for the most part, Canadians cheer for the Jays, and look forward to watching them on TV.
The NFL definitely outdraws the CFL. It is far more popular, to the point where some Canadians regard it as “real football,” and the CFL as just a minor league feeding the NFL. Again, there are a number of reasons for this, and as before, I won’t go into them.
Interestingly, Canadians (unlike Americans) don’t give a hoot about college football. Well, they might, while they’re attending college or university, but they stop once they graduate. Canadian college football is rarely televised, and when it is, it tends to be a championship game. But certainly not every week.
My understanding is that the CFL is at least somewhat more popular in the western provinces than in the east, but I’m not Canadian, so I may be incorrect.