Over the last three days, I’ve heard NASCAR, Arena Football, and Major League Soccer each claim they were the fastest growing sports in the US. Now, they can’t all be the fastest growing sport, so does anyone know what is? I suspect it’s probably something small and not so mainstream (like lacrosse or field hockey or something) because even a very small gain in numbers would be big percentage wise.
Side-hacking.
Last I heard it was paintball, but calling it a sport might be questionable to some.
You laugh, CandidGamera, but apparently that sport is still around under a different name. Sidecar racing, I think. Wouldn’t surprise me if it changed after that awful movie came out.
Surely it depends on how one defines “growth”? Is it growth in the number of participants? The number who pay to attend and watch? The television audience?
By most of those measures I would say it is poker. The questions is whether it is a sport, or some other category of entertainment.
Also depends how you’re measuring it. If NASCAR goes from 20 million attendance to 24 million, is that more or less than if ping pong goes from 10,000 to 15,000? Are you measuring by percentage growth? Rate of growth? Total number of spectators? Do you count TV audience?
Moved to IMHO.
-xash
General Questions Moderator
You’re right. I laugh.
Between the OP’s name, sig, and question, there was no other answer I could give.
The beauty of vague statements like that is that darned near every sport can use some argument or another to be labeled as “fastest-growing,” as in:
“This sport had the greatest {percentage | numerical} growth in {participants | viewers | number of sponsors | sponsorship cost | number of events | hours broadcast on radio or TV | venues | teams | prize money} within {this town | this county | this state | this country | this continent | the world} in the last {day | week | month | year}, according to {actual count | a survey | our estimates | some expert}.”
And, of course, you can always tweak your definition of “sport” to make it true.
I was doing some product reviews a few years ago, and within the category three were advertised as the cheapest, four as the lightest, two as the best-selling, and so on. Same tricks.
Restatement of earnings. Corporate fraud-lots of spectators, usually broke.