NFL edged out by NBA in overseas sports market

The NBA is the leading U.S. overseas sports export, beating the National Football League, Major League Baseball, and National Hockey League for global online interest.

The findings from SimilarWeb, the global leader in data analytics, shows that the NBA website secured 625.5 million desktop visits over the NFL’s 585.5 million. Although American Football dominates in the US with a 38% share of the combined traffic across all four sites, the sport has relatively little international appeal, with only 19.36% of NFL.com visitors coming from outside the US.

John Pentin, editor of bettingtips4you.com, has helped out with this article by providing some of the analysis. BettingTips4you.com is one of the top websites in the UK where you can find daily picks on most sporting events.

In the battle for London, the international focus for major U.S sports leagues, the NBA won the biggest  share of UK visitors (48%), compared to the NFL’s 33%.

While Canada tops the international list for Hockey, Football, and Baseball – the Philippines leads in NBA fandom with a 7.41% traffic share of all NBA.com traffic.

Moshe Alexenberg, director of digital insights at SimilarWeb, said:

“American sports leagues are going global, attracting the attention of a growing fan base beyond North America. In this international playing field, the NBA is the blowout winner, emerging as the U.S sport of choice in countries including the Philippines, the UK, Taiwan, Germany, China, Australia and France.”

Biggest overseas consumers of US sports

1. Canada

2. Philippines

3. UK

4. Taiwan

5. Germany

6. China

7. Australia

8. Venezuela

9. France

10. Mexico