In the United States, both baseball and football have passionate fans who claim that they follow the true number one sport in America. But, how does one determine what is the actual "number one American sport"?

There are several categories that can be considered when determining America's number one pastime. Analyzing attendance, ticket costs, revenue from television, salaries, venues, will help to present a case for which sport is number one in the United States. These six factors will help determine which sport is more beloved by Americans.

Attendance

One way to determine whether baseball or football is more popular in America is by looking at how many people go to the games. During the year 2000, the average crowd at a baseball game was 30,125, while the average crowd at a football game was 66,077. This figure is based on a total yearly attendance, divided by the total number of games that were played in the sport. Simply based upon this one factor, it would appear that twice as many people went to football games than to baseball games in that particular year.

Ticket Costs

An aspect which can contribute to the popularity of a sport is ticket cost. An important question is: how affordable is it for the average family in America to go to a live sporting event? Pertaining to this factor, baseball is more accessible and potentially more popular overall with average, to below-average income earning American families. Baseball games, in the year 2000, cost $20.02, while football games cost an average of $54.14. Clearly, live baseball is easier to afford than live football, and watching games live is an experience that can create a lot of fans and generate plenty of excitement for a particular sport.

Television Revenue

Another important factor to consider when analyzing the popularity of a given sport is how much money that sport accumulates from television revenues. In this case, football is the clear winner. The NFL brings in about 2.2 billion dollars a year in revenues from television. The MLB earns about 340 million. The significant difference pertaining to TV revenue is that football is on a few days per week, and baseball is on nearly every night. However, football still brings in much more money from ad revenues on television, which means that there are more people watching the football games than are watching the baseball games. When it comes to television revenue, football is the number one sport.

However, this does not settle the argument. The baseball season and the football season are opposites in many ways. Baseball season is long and drawn out, with a team playing almost every night. Football games are essentially once a week, even though the league and the networks have added Saturday and Thursday games to the already successful "Monday Night Football". This creates more of a buzz for a football game, and the TV numbers and the revenue generation is a product of that buzz.

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