Rank | Sport | Audience | Regions |
1 | Football (Soccer) | 4 Billion | Europe, Africa, Asia, America |
2 | Cricket | 2.5 Billion | Asia, Australia, UK |
3 | Basketball | 2.5 Billion | America, Oceania, Middle East |
4 | Field Hockey | 2.2 Billion | Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia |
5 | Tennis | 1 Billion | Europe, Asia, America |
6 | Volleyball | 900 Million | Europe, Australia, Asia, America |
7 | Table Tennis | 850 Million | Europe, Africa, Asia, America |
8 | Baseball | 500 Million | America, Japan |
9 | Rugby | 475 Million | Oceania, South Africa, England |
10 | Golf | 450 Million | America, Oceania, Europe |
Well since we were talking about it I decided to do some (limited) research. Some of the stats seemed outdated as basketball has really taken off these last few years so this table is only an approximation based on numbers I was able to find online. The popularity of Field Hockey blew my mind.
I played both football/soceer and table tennis as a kid. A few games of volleyball and basketball, too.
Nothing compares with table tennis in personal intensity, speed and agility (well, maybe the unlisted racquetball is similar). It is good for your spine in later years, I think.
A little bit of tennis later on...looking forward to playing golf upon retirement

I played hundreds of hours of table tennis against my 2 brothers. Lot of fun to play it and not crazy expensive to play it. But where I grew up teams sports were baseball basketball and American football. Growing up in the 60's there was an amazing amount of kids to play team sport with and a lot of unorganized sandlot ball much better than what they do now. Were it is all freaking organized.
I had a good friend that played some miner league ball not quite good enough to make the pros but he knocked around in the minor leagues a few years.
We would go to the local ball field at sunrise and hit fly balls and ground balls for hours to practice .