When I was reading the papers the other day I noticed this surprising bit of information about sports. The 2 most popular outdoor sports are not football, baseball, or soccer, and obviously it’s not basketball, either since those events are held mainly indoors.
They keep statistics on how many people go to these events and how many people are directly involved and then they plug it into some formula to rank popularity. Remember we are talking about sports that are strictly outdoors.
The first one of the 2 most popular outdoor activities or sports watching birds. That is right – birdwatching. Birdwatching as a sport is a little like bass fishing tournaments, humans are competing with nature, not teams against teams. Birding is similar to fishing as a sport because there are bird spotting and bird identification competitions just as there are fishing tournaments. Although the monetary scale for prizes is no where near that of Bass Fishing!
You would be amazed at how many people are birding these days and it is a low-cost hobby or sport to participate in. One last thing I want to mention about the expenses involved in this sport is that many birders invest in a quality pair of bird binoculars to get the most out of their birdwatching trips. If you are going to do serious fishing, you will spend about the same amount.
No kidding. I could not believe the second most popular sport is NASCAR racing. But looking at the stats I can see how they got to that conclusion. What makes this such an incredibly popular sport is that there are hundreds of thousands of fans attending the NASCAR events, and there are a lot of them being held all around the country. I was astounded by this discovery.
What makes NASCAR racing such an incredibly popular spectator sport? There are hundreds of thousands of fans attending NASCAR events. And NASCAR has a lot of racing events all around the country. Just think how many people would have to fill your baseball stadium to equal the number of people at a Nascar event. It is the stats folks. The statistics about the numbers of people. That is how they came up with birdwatching and NASCAR as the top two outdoor sports. You really could have fooled me!
When I shared this information at the office, no one else guessed the two most popular outdoor sports in America either. Right. Birdwatching and NASCAR racing.
NASCAR racing is one of Daniel’s interests so you can see some interesting articles and pick up schedules and news at his site. You just might be surprised to discover other interesting facts there too. Like Birdwatching?
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