When sports journalists are given to choose the most common and favorite sports in Europe, they always become puzzled in ranking the top three favorite European sports. If we observer sports journals and magazines, we will get a contradictory ranking every now and then.
But if we rank the popularity of the sports on the basis of certain criteria such as a number of TV viewership, presence in social media, audience, and Television right deals and then rank the popularity of sports we can find that the most favorite and common sport in Europe is Soccer. After Soccer, the second most popular sport is Basketball and Rugby will be the third on the list.
Soccer: In Europe, over 4 billion of people follows soccer. Thus, it has no comparison with any other game – it is undoubtedly the most popular sport in Europe. The most iconic event of this sport is FIFA World cup. The top three interesting and surprising facts about soccer are:
- Over 6500 clubs from all over the world are registered with FIFA.
- The most highly paid soccer player is Cristiano Ronaldo who gets £17.5 million after deducting taxes.
- Adidas pays the most lucrative kit deals to Manchester United and pays £ 75 million per year.
Basketball: Basketball is the second favorite sport in Europe and over 1 billion people follow this sport. Over last 4-5 decades, it has been seen that basketball reserved an undisputed second position in the ranking of the sport. The top three interesting facts that you should be crazy to know are:
- The average salary of basketball athlete in NBA is almost $4.4 million per year.
- Stephen Curry is the most highly paid basketball player who gets $34.7 million per year.
- Bloomer suits were the name of the first women’s basketball uniforms.
Rugby: Rugby is the third most popular sport in Europe and in recent year a huge popularity is seen countries like United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Its popularity is also increasing in Japan, Italy, Argentina and some other fast-growing countries. The most surprising facts about Rugby that may not have heard before are:
- There are almost 410 million fans of Rugby.
- The average salary for Rugby player is almost $60,000 per year.
- In 2015 Rugby World cup a revenue of more than £ 250 million was generated.
