FIFA World Cup tops YouGov’s Global Sport Rankings 2023 in UAE

FIFA dominated YouGov’s Global Sport Rankings 2023 in UAE, with FIFA World Cup leading the table with a Buzz score of 61.2 points. Following it in second was the FIFA Club World Cup, with a score of 40.3.

YouGov SportsIndex measures the public’s perception of sports brands on a daily basis across a range of metrics. YouGov’s Global Sport Rankings 2023 are based on the Buzz scores, which measures whether respondents have heard something positive or negative about a brand recently.

Football dominated the rankings, with five events making the top ten list. Along with the top two events, UEFA Champions League, English Premier League and La Liga also appeared in the list, in third (24.9), seventh (22.8) and ninth (18.8), respectively.

Cricket based sporting events also featured prominently, with the ICC Cricket World Cup ranking fourth (24.0) and the ICC World Twenty20 taking the sixth place (23.6).

Formula One was the only non-football or non-cricket event in the top five, ranked in fifth (24.0).

Finally, Dubai Marathon and UAE Tour- the only domestic events to feature in the list- completed the rankings in eighth (19.8) and tenth (16.3), respectively.

Methodology

SportsIndex is one of YouGov Sport’s signature tools. It operates in 35 markets around the world, tracking 200 key domestic and international competitions across more than 30 sports. A core of 21 properties is tracked in every market, allowing for international comparison. Many other events, leagues and tournaments appear in multiple markets; while some competitions are tracked only in the country which hosts them.

The 2023 Buzz Report provides insight into all the sports events we monitor against just one of the 16 metrics we measure – ‘Buzz’.

Every day, we ask 100 people these questions...

“Over the past two weeks, which of the following sports events/leagues have you heard something positive about?” and “Now which of the following sports/events leagues have you heard something negative about over the past two weeks?”

From the answers we collect, we derive a Buzz score for each event, or the difference between the percentage of respondents hearing positive news and the percentage hearing negative news about an event in the previous two weeks. So, depending on what is going on, an event’s Buzz score can reveal whether conversations around a property are positive or negative at a point in time.

Buzz scores can range from +100 (where everyone we asked has heard something positive) to -100 (where everyone we asked has heard something negative). A completely neutral score, therefore, would be zero. A score of 45 would show positive sentiment towards a property, by a margin of 45 percentage-points.

For our Buzz rankings here, we look at the highest average Buzz score each property has scored each calendar month. Then we take the highest of those twelve scores and compare them with highest monthly scores of every other property we track in that market. We track up to 80 properties in each country but for the sake of this report, we display only the top ten in each market overall (typically a mix of domestic and international). In addition, we show a top five or top ten ranking for each market for those competitions hosted or held (in part or in their entirety) in each market over the year.