Global: How popular are the Golden State Warriors

With Golden State Warriors having clinched their third NBA Championship in six years, we dive into Global Fan Profiles data to understand the popularity of Steve Kerr’s side around the world.

The San Francisco-based outfit team is number three on the popularity list among NBA’s global following. A seventh of NBA’s fans around the world says they support the Golden State Warriors (14%). Only Los Angeles Lakers (27%) and Chicago Bulls (20%) claim a bigger slice of the global NBA following. NBA fans in this piece refer to those that say they are somewhat interested in the league or that it is one of their top interests.

Breaking down the data by country reveals huge regional variances in the popularity of the Golden State Warriors in each market. In the Philippines, it enjoys the support of two-fifth of NBA fans (38%), tying for the most popular team in the market alongside the Lakers. Notably Golden State Warriors were the first team to have a player of Filipino heritage in NBA history when they picked Raymond Townsend in 1978.
Golden State Warriors generally appear to have a considerable following in Asia Pacific markets. Other than the Philippines, it also enjoys significant popularity in Taiwan (21%), China (16%) and South Korea (14%).

The team – which has superstar Steph Curry on its roster – also claims a big chunk of NBA fans in the United Arab Emirates (16%). The support is however more modest in other parts of MENA region – Saudi Arabia (9%) and Morocco (8%). Among American NBA fans, one in seven say they support Golden State Warriors (15%). The support is considerably lower in this neighbourhood, with Canada at 8% and Mexico the same.

Golden State Warriors have significant room for growing their support base in key European markets. In Croatia, only 4% of NBA fans say they support the team, and the share rises only slightly in Britain (6%), Spain (7%) and Greece (7%).

Global Fan Profiles also allows us to get a granular look at the make-up of an audience. For context, we compared the demographic constitution of the Warriors’ fans against fans of the other four most popular NBA teams – Los Angeles Lakers, Chicago Bulls, Houston Rockets and Boston Celtics.

The team which is called the Dubs by its fans has a significantly younger fanbase. More than a third of the Warriors’ fans globally are aged between 18-24 (35%), whereas members of this age bracket make up just 23% of the fans of the other four most popular NBA sides.

Looking at a gender split of the data, the differences are minor. Men constitute 63% of the Warriors’ supporters, while women make up 37%. Three-fifths of the support base of the other four major sides are men (61%), while women are two-fifths of the fan base.

Methodology: YouGov Global Fan Profiles, which includes data from 38 markets, is based on continuously collected data from several sources, rather than from a single limited questionnaire.