New data has revealed which Olympic sports are the most popular across the UK, with trampolining coming out on top, followed by mountain biking, skateboarding, and fencing.
Hockey came out in the top half of the ranking, sitting in 19th position ahead of table tennis, diving, archery and judo.
Better, the UK’s largest charitable social enterprise, with facilities offering 95% of all the Olympic sports, analysed search popularity for every sport in the current Olympics in Tokyo to discover which ones have the country most excited.
The ranking looks outside of the classic ‘big four’ sports of football, boxing, golf, and rugby, seeking instead to explore the less mainstream sports associated with the huge international sporting tournament being held in Japan this year.
Trampolining, mountain biking and skateboarding claim the top three positions with an average search volume of over 500,000 each month between them.
Hockey had 18,100 searches and sat behind the likes of sailing, karate and equestrian.
The top 10 ranking
If even winning a medal at the Olympics does not get you attention, it shows the state of hockey in Britain. I would assume this holds true for the rest of Europe too. Less attention means less funds for hockey. It means hockey falls behind other sports in fighting for viewer attention.
Now tell me with a straight face that you don’t need Hockey 5s. Some may argue that Indoor Hockey is the key. I disagree, Indoor hockey has had more than a dozen world cups and European cups and yet it could not climb the top 10 sport charts in any European country.
Maybe even hockey 5s will fails to garner interest but we won’t know until we try.
I’m not sure this tells us much really about the popularity of the sport – it isn’t clear how this research was conducted, to ensure relevant searches only were included. I’d have a suspicion that trampolining may have been influenced by Mums and Dads looking for the local trampoline and soft play centre for their 4yr old, and I know I searched for fencing during the Olympics, but mine was related to 6ft wooden panels, not foils and epees.
What would be more interesting would be to see comparative data from before and during the Games to understand the level of interest that the events themselves created, or understand contextual searches (“find local hockey club”) in the same time periods.
As for Hockey 5s vs 11 a side. I might be convinced when the Olympics data shows that 3 x 3 basketball proved more popular than the tradition game…..
The survey results look flawed to me given the sports at the top so I wouldn’t take much notice of it. If u go back to the London Olympics where almost every event was sold out, hockey was the 3rd best attended after athletics and football and don’t forget the 10 million who watched the GB women win gold on TV