Meles Fan.
Professional
Federer duuuuuuuh.
LeBron James vs Roger Federer: Who's the more famous athlete?
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Federer duuuuuuuh.
TheTennisNoob
New User
I hear more fed but I guess it's subjective depending on your news sites and search history and people you talk to
I suspect Bball fans are much more likely to wear the attire their idol peddles, while many tennis fans can think for themselves and can be fans of the game and specific players, without wasting ridiculous amounts on whatever Nike or Uniqlo geniuses decide to flog via tennis stars. Has anybody ever bought those Wawi shorts lol?
tennis24x7
Professional
Not worldwide.
NonP
Legend
These "discussions" amount to little more than fan(atic)s broadcasting their bias and parochialism, but let's get one thing clear: most of those quasi-objective rankings you see online are worse than useless. Michael Brown of the Biggest Global Sports site made this salient point:
For an accurate snapshot of global fandom you really have to factor in everything. No list I've come across strikes me as largely satisfactory but these two seem closer to the mark than the rest:
www.totalsportek.com
Now I still don't buy that tennis ranks anywhere near as high as 3rd or 4th globally in terms of active participation - in my experience it lags behind volleyball and ping-pong/table tennis, let alone football/soccer and basketball - but at least you don't see the likes of hockey (either one), cricket and badminton(!) eclipsing what is almost certainly the world's 2nd most popular (and presumably fastest-growing) sport.
Of course the stock retort here is that basketball is a team sport and Federer as the most recognizable name in the world's most popular individual sport outstrips any bball player. Sounds plausible, right? Not so fast:
This is actually a very useful tool and thanks for bringing it to our (my) attention, but it's not a foolproof one. As you can see almost all of Africa and a great portion of the Middle East are excluded, and as I've pointed out internet access is still a luxury in much of the world. So while Google searches may do a good job of reflecting the level of interest among the bourgeoisie they don't tell us much about the same among the working class... and guess where the latter is predominant (by Western standards)?
Of course bball is a more accessible sport than tennis and even with the usual caveats - Fed is in the twilight of his career and has been MIA since early 2020, while LeBron probably has a couple more good years left - I think it fair to say LBJ wins this round. But neither holds a candle to Messi or Ronaldo:
Now there's one possible spoilsport, which brings us to....
Correct, but that can only help LeBron as basketball is by some metrics the biggest sport in the Middle Kingdom. I still don't think that's enough to put him in the same class as the football royalty, but maybe it's closer than most of us think.
But not even a Messi or Ronaldo can probably challenge the real sports royalty (Pelé, the late Maradona, MJ). So numbers alone don't tell the full story, as usual.
For an accurate snapshot of global fandom you really have to factor in everything. No list I've come across strikes me as largely satisfactory but these two seem closer to the mark than the rest:
Biggest Global Sports
A statstical analysis of world's most popular specatator sports, as well as biggest sports per country and meta-analyis of greatest all time athletes
www.biggestglobalsports.com
25 World's Most Popular Sports (Ranked by 13 factors)
Which is the biggest and most Popular sport in the world ? to answer this question we used criteria of 13 factors global base, tv viewership numbers, money
www.totalsportek.com
Now I still don't buy that tennis ranks anywhere near as high as 3rd or 4th globally in terms of active participation - in my experience it lags behind volleyball and ping-pong/table tennis, let alone football/soccer and basketball - but at least you don't see the likes of hockey (either one), cricket and badminton(!) eclipsing what is almost certainly the world's 2nd most popular (and presumably fastest-growing) sport.
Of course the stock retort here is that basketball is a team sport and Federer as the most recognizable name in the world's most popular individual sport outstrips any bball player. Sounds plausible, right? Not so fast:
This is actually a very useful tool and thanks for bringing it to our (my) attention, but it's not a foolproof one. As you can see almost all of Africa and a great portion of the Middle East are excluded, and as I've pointed out internet access is still a luxury in much of the world. So while Google searches may do a good job of reflecting the level of interest among the bourgeoisie they don't tell us much about the same among the working class... and guess where the latter is predominant (by Western standards)?
Of course bball is a more accessible sport than tennis and even with the usual caveats - Fed is in the twilight of his career and has been MIA since early 2020, while LeBron probably has a couple more good years left - I think it fair to say LBJ wins this round. But neither holds a candle to Messi or Ronaldo:
Now there's one possible spoilsport, which brings us to....
Correct, but that can only help LeBron as basketball is by some metrics the biggest sport in the Middle Kingdom. I still don't think that's enough to put him in the same class as the football royalty, but maybe it's closer than most of us think.
But not even a Messi or Ronaldo can probably challenge the real sports royalty (Pelé, the late Maradona, MJ). So numbers alone don't tell the full story, as usual.
Dolgopolov85
G.O.A.T.
The Google Trends data is indeed not foolproof and not just because it excludes China. There is no way the Fed-Lebron 'head to head' in India is 75-25. That data may overrepresent Zoomers who may be using the internet more than older sports fans. For sure Federer is more popular than LBJ by an even bigger margin, like 90-10 at least. Basketball is super niche here and after Jordan, it was Kobe Bryant who got name dropped a lot here. And yeah, Messi and Ronaldo are easily more popular than Fed here too. On a worldwide scale, nobody beats them for popularity though all time, yes, they can't hold a candle to Pele or Maradona. Maradona 1986 is like Thriller or a Beatles Greatest. There's almost no-one who hasn't heard about it, lol.These "discussions" amount to little more than fan(atic)s broadcasting their bias and parochialism, but let's get one thing clear: most of those quasi-objective rankings you see online are worse than useless. Michael Brown of the Biggest Global Sports site made this salient point:
For an accurate snapshot of global fandom you really have to factor in everything. No list I've come across strikes me as largely satisfactory but these two seem closer to the mark than the rest:
Biggest Global Sports
A statstical analysis of world's most popular specatator sports, as well as biggest sports per country and meta-analyis of greatest all time athleteswww.biggestglobalsports.com25 World's Most Popular Sports (Ranked by 13 factors)
Which is the biggest and most Popular sport in the world ? to answer this question we used criteria of 13 factors global base, tv viewership numbers, money
Now I still don't buy that tennis ranks anywhere near as high as 3rd or 4th globally in terms of active participation - in my experience it lags behind volleyball and ping-pong/table tennis, let alone football/soccer and basketball - but at least you don't see the likes of hockey (either one), cricket and badminton(!) eclipsing what is almost certainly the world's 2nd most popular (and presumably fastest-growing) sport.
Of course the stock retort here is that basketball is a team sport and Federer as the most recognizable name in the world's most popular individual sport outstrips any bball player. Sounds plausible, right? Not so fast:
This is actually a very useful tool and thanks for bringing it to our (my) attention, but it's not a foolproof one. As you can see almost all of Africa and a great portion of the Middle East are excluded, and as I've pointed out internet access is still a luxury in much of the world. So while Google searches may do a good job of reflecting the level of interest among the bourgeoisie they don't tell us much about the same among the working class... and guess where the latter is predominant (by Western standards)?
Of course bball is a more accessible sport than tennis and even with the usual caveats - Fed is in the twilight of his career and has been MIA since early 2020, while LeBron probably has a couple more good years left - I think it fair to say LBJ wins this round. But neither holds a candle to Messi or Ronaldo:
Now there's one possible spoilsport, which brings us to....
Correct, but that can only help LeBron as basketball is by some metrics the biggest sport in the Middle Kingdom. I still don't think that's enough to put him in the same class as the football royalty, but maybe it's closer than most of us think.
But not even a Messi or Ronaldo can probably challenge the real sports royalty (Pelé, the late Maradona, MJ). So numbers alone don't tell the full story, as usual.
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