America’s Most Passionate Sports Fans 2020 (2024)

^America’s stadiums may be silent, but its fans aren’t, and the Cheeseheads of Green Bay are proving that they are the loudest of them all: The Lambeau loyalists come out on top in the Forbes ranking of the best fans in sports.

Measuring passion is a tricky thing. Crazy certainly helps, but Pope hats, gold and black death paint, and gladiator getups aren’t the reason New Orleans Saints fans rank third on our list. We look at more concrete evidence, including television ratings, game attendance, merchandise sales and social media reach. We evaluated every one of North America’s 123 professional teams in the NBA, the NFL, the NHL and MLB.

One takeaway: NFL fans are the most devoted, with fans of the league’s 32 teams grabbing six of the top ten spots. The most blasé? Hockey and baseball fans, each with only one franchise represented.

TEAM OWNER: 361,169 fans and shareholders

TEAM VALUE: $2.85 billion

SOCIAL MEDIA FOLLOWING: 7.49 million

AVERAGE ATTENDANCE: 77,845

CHAMPIONSHIPS: 13

Cheeseheadsare willing to marry, divorce, remarry—even abandon their mothers—for a shot at tickets. No wonder: The season-ticket waiting list has 137,000 names on it, and 99% of current holders renew every year.

TEAM OWNER & NET WORTH: Robert Kraft ($6.9 billion)

TEAM VALUE: $4.1 billion

SOCIAL MEDIA FOLLOWING: 11.6 million

AVERAGE ATTENDANCE: 65,753

CHAMPIONSHIPS: 6

The Tom Brady juggernaut is considered one of the best football teams of all time—and one of the most controversial. One fan starteda GoFundMe campaign to help pay a $1 million fine after the Deflategate cheating scandal.

TEAM OWNER & NET WORTH: Gayle Benson ($3.2 billion)

TEAM VALUE: $2.275 billion

SOCIAL MEDIA FOLLOWING: 5.4 million

AVERAGE ATTENDANCE: 73,082

CHAMPIONSHIPS: 1

A full 75% of New Orleans residents identify as Saints fans—second in the NFL to Green Bay’s 82% with the Packers—helping to make the “Who Dat” nation’ssocial media following four times as big as the city’s population of 1.3 million.

TEAM OWNER: Daniel Rooney Trust, Arthur Rooney II

TEAM VALUE: $2.8 billion

SOCIAL MEDIA FOLLOWING: 9.8 million

AVERAGE ATTENDANCE: 62,237

CHAMPIONSHIPS: 6

The Steelers are the biggest show in town, with more locals identifying as fans of the black and yellow than for the city’s hockey and baseball franchises. Next stop: making the Terrible Towel the official state flag.

TEAM OWNER & NET WORTH: Jeffrey Lurie ($2.7 billion)

TEAM VALUE: $3.05 billion

SOCIAL MEDIA FOLLOWING: 6.6 million

AVERAGE ATTENDANCE: 69,783

CHAMPIONSHIPS: 4

It takes a special breed of fan to merit two Hollywood movies, both of them blockbusters. The throng has made thisfranchise the most popular in Philadelphia, besting the Phillies, the 76ers and the Flyers.

TEAM OWNER: Paul G. Allen Trust

TEAM VALUE: $2.775 billion

SOCIAL MEDIA FOLLOWING: 6.3 million

AVERAGE ATTENDANCE: 68,990

CHAMPIONSHIPS: 1

They call them the 12th Man, a mob so loud that visiting teams blame it when they lose—and so beloved that the city it represents allows a fan to hoist a No. 12 flag to fly atop the iconic Space Needle for every home game.

TEAM OWNER & NET WORTH: Joe Lacob ($1.2 billion) and Peter Guber

TEAM VALUE: $4.3 billion

SOCIAL MEDIA FOLLOWING: 18.1 million

AVERAGE ATTENDANCE:18,064

CHAMPIONSHIPS: 6

You couldn’t give this team’s merchandise away a decade ago; today, it’s a bestseller, led by Stephen Curry’s jersey. An added bonus: the league’s highest average local television rating during 2018-19.

TEAM OWNER: Clayton Bennett and Aubrey McClendon Estate

TEAM VALUE: $1.575 billion

SOCIAL MEDIA FOLLOWING: 9.8 million

AVERAGE ATTENDANCE: 18,203

CHAMPIONSHIPS: 1 (as the Seattle SuperSonics)

The Thunder have reliably sold out the Chesapeake Energy Arena since 2012, even without All-Star Russell Westbrook. It helps that they are Oklahoma City’s only pro team, as does making the playoffs nine times in 11 seasons.

TEAM OWNER & NET WORTH: Ron Burkle ($1.4 billion) and Mario Lemieux

TEAM VALUE: $665 million

SOCIAL MEDIA FOLLOWING: 3.9 million

AVERAGE ATTENDANCE: 18,537

CHAMPIONSHIPS: 5

The NHL’s only team in the top ten can thank All-Star Sidney Crosby, whose jersey has been a hot item since his 2005 debut. Two Stanley Cups in the last five years help, as do 12 sellout seasons at PPG Paints Arena.

TEAM OWNER: John Henry and Thomas Werner

TEAM VALUE: $3.3 billion

SOCIAL MEDIA FOLLOWING:7.3 million

AVERAGE ATTENDANCE:36,106

CHAMPIONSHIPS:9

It took 86 years to shed the Curse of the Bambino and win a World Series, but Red Sox Nation has proved even more loyal than Pats fans, with almost 80% of locals identifying as fans.

The Forbes best fans ranking looks at local television ratings (per Nielsen), stadium attendance based on capacity reached, secondary ticket demand (per StubHub), merchandise sales (per Fanatics), social media reach (Facebook and Twitter followers based on the team’s metro area population) and hometown crowd reach (defined by Nielsen as a percentage of the metropolitan area population that watched, attended and/or listened to a game in the last year) of the biggest sports leagues in North America. Information for women’s sports leagues was unavailable. Although some information was unavailable for some Canadian teams, there was enough to include them here, and those teams were not penalized for the missing information in the ranking. The ranking accounts for bandwagon fans by factoring in three years of data to offset any single-season anomalies. To be fair in determining social media reach, in the multi-team markets, we divided the population accordingly. Merchandise is based on units moved, not dollars spent. No correlation was noted between Forbes’ annual NBA, NFL, NHL or MLB valuations and this ranking.