Over the past several years, social media forum Reddit has gained rising popularity among online users. With approximately 430 million monthly online users and over 180,000 different topic sub-forums, the site has seen a 42% increase in activity since the coronavirus pandemic began. With an active community of members, the site can serve as a means to measure the popularity of different sports on the Olympic stage.
Reddit has also gained popularity amongst the swimming community, with Olympian Nathan Adrian hosting an AMA (ask me anything) session on the platform in collaboration with USA Swimming’s Make a Splash program.
Across the site, there are 45 summer and winter Olympic Sports that currently have established forums for discussions about international competitions, technique, rankings, and other topics. Out of those sports, football (soccer) has the most popular forum with 3,482,982 active members, followed by baseball, which has 2,038,356 members. Both sports have audiences that are primarily driven by their presence outside of the Olympic realm, including the MLB for baseball and FIFA for soccer. The most popular winter Olympic sport forum is snowboarding, with 1,479,839 members, which also draws from an audience outside of the Olympic Games with the X-Games competition series.
The swimming forum (r/Swimming) leads all aquatic sports with its 112,171 members, ranking it 21st among all Olympic sports. In sports where the Olympics serve as the “pinnacle competition”, swimming ranks as the 13th most-popular subreddit. The diving forum (r/diving) sports a total of 29,110 members, ranking it 34th out of 45 sports. Water polo (r/waterpolo) comes in just behind with 8,622 members, 41st out of 45 sports. Meanwhile, the forum specific to open water swimming boasts 4,688 members, coming in 44th.
Reddit Forums for Olympic Sports Ranked by Number of Members
| Sport | Forum Name |
Number of Members
|
| Football (soccer) | r/soccer | 3,482,982 |
| Baseball | r/baseball | 2,038,356 |
| Running | r/running | 1,934,614 |
| Snowboarding | r/snowboarding | 1,479,839 |
| Hockey | r/hockey | 1,451,524 |
| Skiing | r/Skiing | 1,370,689 |
| Boxing | r/Boxing | 1,155,058 |
| Climbing | r/climbing | 1,106,977 |
| Tennis | r/tennis | 838,522 |
| Golf | r/golf | 501,675 |
| Skateboarding | r/skateboarding | 450,422 |
| Basketball | r/Basketball | 433,621 |
| Cycling | r/cycling | 270,133 |
| Rugby | r/rugbyunion | 202,833 |
| Judo | r/judo | 169,159 |
| Weightlifting | r/weightlifting | 165,038 |
| Triathlon | r/triathlon | 161,516 |
| Surfing | r/surfing | 136,785 |
| Sailing | r/sailing | 131,894 |
| Archery | r/Archery | 114,373 |
| Swimming | r/Swimming | 112,171 |
| Kayaking | r/Kayaking | 108,050 |
| Athletics | r/trackandfield | 89,870 |
| Volleyball | r/volleyball | 81,483 |
| Wrestling | r/wrestling | 74,117 |
| Rowing | r/Rowing | 73,235 |
| BMX Cycling | r/bmx | 52,857 |
| Equestrian | r/Equstrian | 49,953 |
| Figure Skating | r/FigureSkating | 43,893 |
| Gymnastics | r/Gymnastics | 37,810 |
| Table Tennis | r/tabletennis | 37,220 |
| Karate | r/karate | 32,817 |
| Fencing | r/Fencing | 32,364 |
| Diving | r/diving | 29,110 |
| Badminton | r/badminton | 27,727 |
| Taekwondo | r/taekwondo | 25,074 |
| Curling | r/Curling | 12,635 |
| Futsal | r/futsal | 11,800 |
| Handball | r/Handball | 9,598 |
| Handball | r/Handball | 9,598 |
| Water Polo | r/waterpolo | 8,622 |
| Softball | r/Softball | 6,150 |
| Biathlon | r/biathlon | 5,606 |
| Open Water Swimming | r/OpenWaterSwimming | 4,688 |
| Speed Skating | r/Speedskating | 1,433 |
Behind archery?
I am shocked.
Basketball is def the most popular sport lol. r/nba is where most of the basketball lovers are at with like 5 million members
What??? Basketball is only really big in 1 country.
This is simply false. France, Spain, Serbia, Slovenia, Canada, Germany, Australia, and Nigeria are all well represented in the NBA, many with All Star level talent. The back-to-back MVP Nikola Jokic is Serbian, Rudy Gobert of France is 3x DPOY, 2019 Rookie of the Year Luka Doncic hails from Slovenia. Hakeem Olajuwon, Tony Parker, Dirk Nowitski, GIANNIS ANTETOKOUNMPO, Joel Embiid, Yao Ming, the Gasol brothers, Dikembe Mutombo, Deandre Ayton. Kobe Bryant and Kyrie Irving both spent significant portions of their youth outside of America. Please, check yourself
That’s not true at all. In Europe there are a lot of passionate basketball fans and the atmosphere at their games are crazy with filled stadiums of passionate fans. Also basketball is super popular in China which is why so many NBA stars travel to China to promote the game each summer
The last 4 MVPs have been won by a Serbian and Greek.
Next one probably will be Slovenian
Specifically on Reddit he means. And it’s in no way only popular in 1 country. It’s the fastest growing in popularity across the world. Swathes of Europe, LatAm, Africa, east Asia, and also Australia is quite popular.
When Dressel went 17.6 in the 50y free I posted a video to r/swimming which got removed for whatever reason. Never went back after that.
it’s a horrible sub. It’s mainly people asking about their goggles are new swimmers saying how many laps they did
omg yes! it’s a cesspool of “I beat my cousin from the pier to the floating dock. I’m pretty good. How good do you think I am” or “I just did a :44.00 for my 50 free, after not swimming for 20 years. Is that good?” etc etc etc
swimswam comments and content are worlds better!!!!!
r/diving is about scuba, snorkeling and free diving, not platform and springboard diving.
r/sailing is mainly about big sailboat cruising, not dinghy and skiff racing.
Futsal is not an Olympic sport.
And during winter time in Europe, after football, handball and biathlon has the biggest fanbase all-around Europe. The most popular downhill or ski jumping events has 30000 people normally as well.
This sums of the problem with the IOC, I bet they follow reddit or the trends on twitter and the real life.
Obviously the content and emphasis varies tremendously. The swimming subreddit is almost exclusively recreational swimmers sharing stories and asking for advice, with very few threads on competitive swimming. The soccer subreddit, on the other hand, is devoted to soccer leagues and matches all over the globe. There is actually another well attended subreddit called Football with 275,000 subscribers. That is not American football. It is soccer. That more relaxed subreddit has a mixture of team/player talk and also some hobbyists asking for advice.
I’m not sure if swimming has any offshoot subreddits. For example, with Running there is Track and Field plus a Sprinting subreddit with lots of quality posters.
I’m a member of many of those subreddits. At first… Read more »
We’re not on Reddit because we are just in the swimswam comments instead.
or on swim twt
r/running and r/swimming aren’t really subreddit’s about the professional and watched parts of the sports they represent. It’s just people asking about ArE mY GoGGlEs gOoD or i just started looka r my technique. They don’t actually discuss the ‘olympic’ or global aspects of the sport except for some occasions. On the bright side finding a place to discuss swimming after realizing r/swimming was more for personal swimming is how i found swimswam
Yeah I was going to say the same thing. I went on r/swimming during the Olympics and no one even engaged at all. I would say less than 1% of posts there are about professional swimming or swimmers.