Bar chart — Men aged 16-25 watching versus playing different sports

The bar chart sets the proportion of 16-to-25-year-old men in a particular country who regularly watch six sports against the proportion who regularly play them.

Overall, football attracts the largest share of both spectators and participants. Most of the sports are watched by more young men than play them, whereas swimming and cycling are chiefly activities that people take part in.

Football is followed by 68% of this age group and played by 41%, the highest figure in each category. The gap is widest for motor racing: it draws the second largest audience, at 44%, yet a mere 3% actually take part, a difference of 41 percentage points. Basketball and tennis show the same pattern on a smaller scale, with 37% watching basketball compared with 22% playing it, while tennis viewers (33%) outnumber players (12%) by nearly three to one.

The reverse is true of the remaining two sports. Swimming is played by 36% of young men, second only to football, but watched by just 9%, which means there are exactly four times as many swimmers as viewers. Similarly, 31% cycle regularly, more than double the 14% who watch the sport. These two activities thus rank second and third for participation but occupy the bottom two places for viewing.