Preview table of contents and sample pages
About This Report
This sports industry report – How Big Is The Sports Industry is taken from Chapter 1 of our book The Business of Sports. This was a project started in 2018 with goal of addressing two basic questions:
1. What should be included in a model that captures the complete scope and structure of the sports industry?
2. How could the model be applied to measure the economic magnitude of the sports industry worldwide?
The answers can be found in our 12-chapter book with over 450 pages of carefully researched and documented facts and data. The book is available as an online book ($79.50) or print book ($99.50) at www.globalsportsinsights.com.
Over the past year, many in the sports industry (professionals & academic programs) have requested specific chapters from our book. This led us to offering Sports Industry Reports that are more focused and less costly.
We hope you enjoy this Sports Industry Report on How Big Is the Sports Industry. Shown below is a common result of a google search.
“Existing revenue estimates for the global sports
industry range from $471 billion to $1.4 trillion.”
We will show this is a massive underestimate of the 9th largest global industry in the world.
Sports Industry Report
Contents
CONTENTS
SPORTS EVENTS
01
SCOPE
03
STRUCTURE
Tier I: 3 Sports Industry Domains
Tier II: 3 Core Areas per Domains
Tier III: 7 Segments per Core Area
Sports Industry Estimates of Size
04
04
07
08
08
SIZE
Global Sports Industry Revenues
U.S. Sports Industry Revenues
09
09
10
GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE
Global Industry Rank
Top Sports Countries
Top Sports Cities
12
13
14
15
ABOUT GLOBAL SPORTS INSIGHTS
AUTHORS & TEAM
19
20
Sample Page 1
Scope, Structure & Size
Sports are global, and their influence goes beyond the playing field and sports arena. Around the globe, sports teams perform before enthusiastic fans at modern venues, and even larger audiences watch on TV or stream online. An increasing number of interested viewers now wager considerable sums on sports outcomes.
Millions of people of every race, ethnicity, and nationality also spend considerable money on sports products, including sportswear, equipment, and health products and service. While many play sports professionally, many spend countless hours participating in their favorite sports and recreation activities, generating billions in sports business revenues through fees, memberships, and licenses. The business of sports is more than the sports we follow in person, in the media, and with sports entertainment. Sports Business includes the numerous companies manufacturing and selling sports products such as sportswear, golf clubs and RV vehicles and the vast network of sports businesses providing sports and recreation participation experiences from health clubs and yoga studios to ski resorts to RV campgrounds. The assorted user fees collected from memberships, greens fees, fishing/hunting licenses, ski lift tickets, travel and lodging, etc. in the U.S. alone amounted to over $300 billion in 2023.
The purpose of Chapter 1 is to examine a broad-scope definition of sports business and develop a structure that allows us to (1) better understand the breadth and depth of the sports business, and (2) build a model that captures all of the essential segments of the sports industry and use that structure to accurately measure the economic magnitude of sports business worldwide.
FIGURE 1.1
Defining the Business of Sports
Copyright 2025 The Business of Sports
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Sports Industry Report
FIGURE 1.5
Sports Business Segments
To some degree, the Best-Howard Model consolidates the available market studies’ common elements. At the same time, each of the existing models offers good depth in one or two sports business domains, none cover the three domains and the core areas of each. The Milano and Chelladurai paper is a foundation for the Best-Howard Model’s development, and the Plunkett Research Group offers the most comprehensive coverage of sports business core areas.
FIGURE 1.6
Sports Events - Core Area & Segments (billions)
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Copyright 2025 The Business of Sports
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Sports Industry Report
FIGURE 1.10
The Business of Sports – Scope, Structure & Size
The only way to understand the full impact and size of the sports business is with a broad-scope definition that includes all aspects of sports revenue generation worldwide. A narrow view limits understanding, revenue estimates, and sports business opportunities. This book will show that limiting our scope to the United States misses roughly 65% of what is happening in the sports business outside the U.S. Also, including sports products and participation as a part of the sports business helps understand the full impact and size of the sports business.
Given a broad scope that is global and inclusive of all sports business revenues presents a bigger challenge in developing a meaningful structure to understand how all the pieces fit together. While this is important, a well-defined structure also provides a basis for measurement, which needs to be improved in most estimates of sports business revenues.
The video in Figure 1.10 provides an overview of the sports business’s scope, structure, and size. Each sports business domain and core area are presented to visually demonstrate the scope and structure of the Best-Howard Sports Business Model.
The Best-Howard Model shows that the full economic value of the global sports industry is $2.65 trillion. The value is derived from a bottom-up approach, in which revenue estimates for 36 segments are compiled, then combined and summed for nine core areas, which are, in turn, aggregated for three domains.
On a global scale, reputable research aggregating firms like Statista and Euromonitor International provide market research on several Best-Howard Model segments. Euromonitor’s Passport site is the gold standard for understanding consumer spending across all Sportswear segments in 210 countries. High-quality industry-specific international reports include the International Health, Racquet & Sportsclub Association’s Global Report: State of the Health Club Industry, Laurent Vanant’s International Report on Snow & Mountain Tourism, and Future Market’s Camping and Caravanning Markets.
Copyright 2025 The Business of Sports
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