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As we have reported in a previous edition of this newsletter, in October Edison Research was acquired by SSRS. One of its many services is the SSRS Sports Poll, which has tracked fandom and many other aspects of the sports world for over 30 years. This week’s insight highlights a finding from the SSRS Sports Poll to introduce our readers to this incredible dataset.

Sports fandom is woven into the fabric of our society and culture. SSRS’s Sports Poll has one of the most expansive datasets on sports, entertainment, and leisure, with trending capabilities back to 1994. Through this dataset, one is able to chronicle sports fandom size among Americans 12+. While sports such as Major League Baseball and the NFL have had large followings in the United States for decades Sports Poll recently captured the impressive rise for one sport in particular: the WNBA.

Even though the 2025 WNBA season ended in September, we wanted to highlight the impressive fandom gains the sport made in 2024. The WNBA now stands as the women’s sport with the largest overall fan base in the U.S., with 110 million fans ages 12 and older. This wasn’t always the case, though. Throughout 2024, the WNBA gained 17.3 million fans, just over the course of that year alone. Not only did this growth in make it the most popular women’s sport, but it also marked the greatest influx of new fans to a league or sport in a single year in the history of the poll, as shown in the graph below.

The graphic illustrates the top ten largest single-year increases in fans to any sport or league. While Sports Poll captured the historic growth of Women’s professional basketball in 2024, it also illustrates the impressive gains Women’s college basketball made in that same year, gaining 12.4 million new fans. The emergence of Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese and other stars led to massive growth at both the WNBA and Women’s college basketball.

Last year also saw significant fandom growth for the NFL, gaining 9.5 million U.S. fans 12+. The SSRS Sports poll documents this growth over the period when Taylor Swift began attending Travis Kelce’s Kansas City Chiefs games.

SSRS’s Sports Poll continues to measure sports fandom audience size throughout 2025 and will have more to report by the end of the year. Visit our website to learn more about Sports Poll.