NASCAR continues to lead in USA popularity

UPDATE #2 This poll is not of ESPN readers—but the public as a whole.

http://www.sportspoll.com/about_sportspoll.htm

Methodology
The ESPN Sports Poll provides measures that encompass all of these avenues of fan interest. We have found, through over eleven years of experience analyzing the sports market, that fan avidity and favoritism toward a particular sport are highly correlated with fan activity. Using these measures in conjunction with a corporation's target segment definitions and sponsorship investment data, we can provide the cost per reach per year for each segment. This information will allow corporations and/or properties to evaluate their overall sponsorship and sports marketing programs. This resource also provides the ability to price and negotiate sponsorship proposals for different sports, based on reaching specific consumer or business-to-business segments.

The ESPN Sports Poll methodologies include the following:

Representative of US population, 12+ in age
Random sample, 2,200 telephone interviews per month, approximately 26,400 annually
CATI and RDD employed
Sport/event fan screener
Interviews occur 360 days of the year
Questionnaire approximately 27-30 minutes in length
Results are weighted to be representative of the Total US Population (12+) by gender, race, region and age.

04/30/07 A reader points out, Reading this made me think, does this actually reflect on the whole country or just those who pay attention to ESPN.com’s motorsports pages? This poll doesn’t reflect realistically beyond their web page. Really it is poor form to say that this represents America’s tastes in motorsports. Although NASCAR’s popularity is obvious, the numbers and remaining positions on the poll seem so off. Brian Defreese

04/30/07 ESPN Sports Poll, asked their auto racing readers the past two years what their favorite form of motorsports is. NASCAR continues to be the most popular form of motorsports in the USA by a wide margin.

FAVORITE TYPES OF AUTO RACING AMONG RACING FANS
RACING TYPE
2006
RACING TYPE
2005
NASCAR
58.7%
NASCAR
59.5%
Motorcycle
11.6%
NHRA
13.4%
NHRA
10.9%
Motorcycle
9.7%
Formula 1
7.0%
Formula 1
6.3%
IRL
6.5%
IRL
6.1%
Champ Car
1.4%
Champ Car
1.4%
Other
0.5%
Other
0.4%
None
3.4%
None
3.3%