August 28th, 2023, Rishad Dsouza
With the 2023 edition of the FIBA Basketball World Cup underway, we dip into YouGov Global Fan Profiles data to explore the landscape of global interest in the tournament.
Interest is particularly strong in two of the three host markets. Philippines (47%) leads the pack by a big margin, with Indonesia at the second place (33%). Three in ten consumers in Spain and China (30% each) also call the FIBA Basketball World Cup one of their top interests or say they are somewhat interested in it. Overall, the survey found that 25% of people globally are interested in the tournament.
Egypt (21%) and Australia (15%) also demonstrate notable enthusiasm. The United States, despite its basketball legacy, stands at just 11%. One must bear in mind that the US regards the NBA as the pinnacle of the sport. At the World Cup, USA often fields a team with relatively lesser-known players compared to globally renowned stars that headline the NBA. The NBA is more than two times as popular as the FIBA Basketball World Cup in the US (26%).
European countries like France (9%) and Germany (8%) have slightly lower levels of interest, while the United Kingdom trails at 3%. At 8%, Japan – the third co-host of this year’s event – has relatively muted interest compared to its two other hosting partners.
Global Fan Profiles also allows us an insight into key demographics of an audience. Looking at the age group distribution of FIBA Basketball World Cup fans reveals that this audience skews slightly younger compared to other globally followed events.
Just over half of the fan base is aged between 18-34 (52%), clearly higher than their share in the overall fan base of FIFA Football World Cup (45%), Summer Olympic Games (45%) and Formula 1 (44%).
The FIBA Basketball World Cup also features a more even distribution of male and female fans compared to the FIFA World Cup and Formula 1. But the Summer Olympic Games comes out tops in this regard, with women making up 47% of this fan base.
The data tool also gathers other key data insights of especial importance to sports marketers. For instance, we can examine the types of sports that an audience follows on a regular basis. Two-fifths of FIBA Basketball World Cup Fans follow basketball on a regular basis (40%), indicating that a majority of them tune in occasionally. Some of the other sports they watch/follow on a regular basis include football/soccer (30%), swimming (23%) and volleyball (22%).
More granular and market-specific insights are also available. As an example, although the age profile of those interested in the FIBA Basketball World Cup and those interested in the NBA look almost identical in the US, the picture changes when looking at gender. Two-thirds of FIBA Basketball World Cup fans in the US are men (66%), whose share in the overall NBA fans pool drops to 60%. The World Cup fans are also likelier than the NBA audience to be residing in the West of the US (28% vs 25%), whereas a bigger chunk of the overall NBA fan base lives in the Midwest (19% vs 15%). The FIBA Basketball World Cup audience is also slightly more affluent on the whole – 14% of them fit in the higher income bracket compared to 9% of the NBA audience.
Access to this wealth of global and regional market data can help marketers better understand audiences when formulating sponsorship plans or brand strategies.
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Methodology: YouGov Global Fan Profiles tracks the size, make-up, attitudes and behaviors of fan bases in 50+ markets around the world. Discover everything you need to know about fan bases globally. Learn more about Global Fan Profiles.