Soccer is still the most liked sport in the world, and it isn’t close. Depending on which research group you trust, it has somewhere between 3.5 and 4 billion fans worldwide. Cricket, basketball, hockey, and tennis fill out the rest of the top five, in that order, based on the fan and viewership estimates most sports research firms are using this year. Here’s how the full list breaks down, and why it matters more than usual for people watching from Canada.
How “Most Popular” Gets Measured
Worth saying upfront: nobody counts sports fans with a census. These numbers come from a mix of TV and streaming viewership, survey data, and participation figures, pulled together by firms like Nielsen Sports and various sports market researchers. Estimates vary from one source to the next, sometimes by hundreds of millions, so treat the numbers below as informed ranges, not exact counts. What’s consistent across nearly every major study is the order: soccer first, then cricket, then basketball.
Top 5 Most Liked Sports in the World
Here’s the full ranking, along with the numbers behind each one and how they connect back to what’s happening in Canadian sport this year.
1. Soccer
Soccer is played across more than 200 countries, and the FIFA World Cup routinely draws the largest television audience of any single event on Earth, the 2022 final alone pulled in over a billion viewers. This year that matters directly to Canadians: the 2026 World Cup is being co-hosted by Canada, the United States, and Mexico, with Toronto and Vancouver both hosting matches. Soccer participation in Canada has been climbing for years, and hosting the tournament is pushing it further into the mainstream.
2. Cricket
Cricket sits second, with an estimated 2.5 billion fans concentrated mostly in South Asia, the UK, Australia, and parts of the Caribbean and Africa. The Indian Premier League and ICC events like the World Cup keep the sport in constant rotation for its fanbase. In Canada, cricket’s growth has tracked immigration from South Asia closely leagues in the Greater Toronto Area and other cities have expanded noticeably over the past decade, and Cricket Canada’s recent change in leadership signals the sport is taking its domestic organization more seriously.
3. Basketball
Basketball comes in third, generally cited around 2.2 to 2.4 billion fans. The NBA has spent two decades building international audiences deliberately, particularly in China, the Philippines, and parts of Europe, and it shows. Canada has its own stake in this one: the country has an NBA franchise based in Toronto and has produced a steady stream of NBA talent over the last several years, so the sport’s global rise and its domestic popularity are moving in the same direction.
4. Hockey
Hockey lands fourth, though the number depends heavily on whether you’re counting field hockey, ice hockey, or both together combined estimates run from roughly 1.3 to 2 billion. Field hockey’s biggest audiences are in South Asia, the Netherlands, and Australia. Ice hockey is where Canada actually leads the world, culturally if not by raw headcount, given the sport’s status as the national winter game and the NHL’s roots here. It’s a useful reality check: hockey is enormous in Canada, but globally it’s a regional sport compared to soccer or cricket.
5. Tennis
Tennis rounds out the list at roughly 1 billion fans, carried by the four Grand Slam tournaments, including the US Open, which draws heavily from Canadian audiences as the closest major to home. The sport’s individual-star format keeps it relevant between majors in a way team sports sometimes struggle to match.
Why It’s Worth Watching From Here
Canada doesn’t fit neatly into most of these global rankings, and that’s kind of the point. Hockey dominates emotionally here even though it’s a mid-pack sport worldwide, while soccer, cricket, and basketball are growing locally in ways that mirror what’s happening globally. Hosting a chunk of the 2026 World Cup only accelerates that shift. For a broader look at what’s on this year across Canadian sport, our Canadian sporting calendar is a good place to start, and our group-stage breakdowns for Group A and Group B cover the World Cup angle in more depth. On the cricket side, see how Cricket Canada’s new leadership is approaching the sport’s domestic growth, and check the latest ICC rankings for where teams currently stand.
Soccer’s lead over everything else isn’t going anywhere, and this year gives Canadians a front-row seat to why. The more interesting story is further down the list: cricket and basketball are both gaining ground globally, and both happen to be growing in Canada too, just for slightly different reasons.
I am Rukaiya Kadiwala, an experienced News Content Writer with 6+ years of expertise in hospitality, travel, hotel, restaurant, business, and lifestyle news. Skilled in writing, research, fact-checking, headline creation, and digital publishing, I create accurate, engaging, and high-quality content that informs and attracts readers worldwide.
