Top Summer Olympic Sports: A Guide to the 2024 Paris Games

The world eagerly anticipates the 2024 Paris Olympics, continuing the fanfare around this historic event. The first Olympic games were held about 2,800 years ago. Every four years for 1,200 years, as many as 50,000 people came together to watch the games in Olympia, Greece. After a 2,000-year pause, the Olympic games came to life again in 1896. 128 years later, over a billion people will watch the games of the XXXIII Olympiad in Paris.

As time has passed, one thing has not waned: an enduring admiration for competition and athletic excellence. We spotlight the favorite Olympic events around the U.S. and the world.

5 fun facts about the Summer Olympics

Over a billion people are expected to watch the 2024 Olympics in Paris, highlighting the games’ global popularity.
The original Olympic sports comprised track and field events—running, jumping, discus, and javelin—as well as wrestling, boxing, equestrian events, and more.
The Paris 2024 Olympics will feature 32 sports categories with 329 events.
Our research found that gymnastics, athletics, swimming, soccer, and basketball are the most popular Olympic sports worldwide.
However, tennis is the most popular Olympic sport in 36 countries.

Olympic sports

Most original Olympic sports, including foot races, javelin, and wrestling, are still played, and many more have been added over the years.

What were the original sports? What sports will be played this year? What are the most popular sports in the world? In each country? In each state? We conducted research to get you the answers.

The original games had 9 sports categories. Many would be familiar to us:

Foot races
Jumping
Discuss
Javelin
Wrestling
Pentathlon (Running, Jumping, Discus)
Boxing
Equestrian
Pankration

Pankration was similar to today’s mixed martial arts. However, it was a brutal full-contact combat sport with only two rules—no biting or eye-gouging.

We are happy to report the 2024 Paris Games will not include Pankration. The games will include 32 categories and 329 different events. You will recognize most of them. Some we think we know but might be challenged to define, like the modern pentathlon. Others might be surprising, like canoeing, surfing, and skateboarding.

Then there is breaking. I’ll let you Google that one.

Paris Summer Olympic Games 2024 sports categories

Aquatics (Swimming, Marathon Swimming, Diving, Water Polo, Artistic Swimming)
Archery
Athletics
Badminton
Basketball (3×3, Basketball)
Boxing
Breaking
Canoe (Canoe Sprint, Canoe Slalom)
Cycling (BMX Freestyle, BMX Racing, Road Cycling, Track Cycling)
Equestrian (Equestrian Eventing, Equestrian Dressage, Equestrian Jumping)
Fencing
Football
Golf
Gymnastics (Artistic Gymnastics, Rhythmic Gymnastics, Trampoline Gymnastics),
Handball
Hockey
Judo
Modern Pentathlon
Rowing
Rugby (Rugby Sevens)
Sailing
Shooting
Skateboarding
Sport Climbing
Surfing
Table Tennis
Taekwondo
Tennis
Triathlon
Volleyball (Beach Volleyball, Volleyball)
Weightlifting
Wrestling (Greco-Roman Wrestling, Freestyle Wrestling).

The world’s favorite Summer Olympic sports

What are the most watched Summer Olympic sports? It depends on who you ask. The world loves futbol, also called soccer or football, depending on who answers. If you ask U.S. Americans, it’s gymnastics. If you ask the Chinese, it’s table tennis, and Mongolians love volleyball. In the U.S., more women watch artistic gymnastics, and more men watch swimming.

It’s quite challenging to rank the popularity of Olympic sports. Ranking methods include the number of participants, website traffic, and Google searches. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) uses a weighting of television viewing figures, internet traffic, surveys, ticket sales, media coverage, and the number of national federations.

We took data from eight sources to compile our top five Summer Olympic sports in the world (see Methodology below).

The world’s top 5 Summer Olympic sports

Gymnastics
Athletics
Swimming
Soccer
Basketball

Favorite Summer Olympic sports in each country

We looked at two data sets for favored Summer Olympics sports by country (see methodology below). The first set was the most popular sport in each country. From this, we counted only sports played in the Summer Olympics.

While some country favorites from this data set were surprising, some were predictable. Ethiopia loves running (track). Most European countries love to watch tennis. Northern Europe—specifically Scotland, where golf originated—prefers golf.

On the unexpected side, golf also ranked No. 1 in Canada. Maybe because it is similar to hockey, involving hitting an object on the ground with a hooked stick? But why is golf so popular in South Africa and Malaysia?

The No. 1 sport in Gabon and Guinea? Skateboarding. Belarus, apparently, loves the trampoline.

Top 5 favorite Summer Olympic sports, by country

Tennis, 36 countries:

Angola, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Chile, Cote de Ivory, Croatia, Czech Republic, DRC, Estonia, France, Georgia, Greece, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Madagascar, Moldova, Nigeria, North Macedonia, Oman, Pakistan, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, Surinam, Switzerland, and UAE.

Golf, 23 countries:

Albania, Australia, Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Japan, Kenya, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Myanmar, Namibia, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden, U.K., Vietnam, and Zimbabwe.

Baseball, 22 countries:

Bangladesh, Bolivia, Botswana, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Ghana, Guatemala, Honduras, Kenya, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Philippines, Sierra Leone, Taiwan, U.S., and Venezuela.

Volleyball, 11 countries

Argentina, Cambodia, Laos, Mexico, Mongolia, Paraguay, Senegal, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Turkmenistan, and Uruguay.

Swimming, 10 countries

Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Tunisia, Turkey, Yemen.

The second data set included only 28 countries and asked only about the

Football/Soccer:

Argentina, Brazil, India, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, Poland, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Spain, Turkey

Athletics/Track and field

Belgium, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Netherlands, South Africa, Sweden

Aquatics:

Australia, Canada, Hungary, Japan

Gymnastics

Chile, Mexico, United States

Table tennis:

China

Cycling:

Colombia

America’s favorite Summer Olympic sport

The favorite sport in the U.S. is still baseball, which is also an Olympic sport. However,

The top 5 favorite Summer Olympic sports in the U.S.

Artistic gymnastics/Swimming (tie)
Diving
Rhythmic gymnastics
Beach volleyball
Basketball

Preferred Olympic sports by state

There is no direct data on which Summer Olympic sport is most popular in each state. We took the top 10 most popular Summer Olympic sports in the U.S. and used Google Trends to see which states were doing the most searches for each of the top 10 sports.

Top 10 states searching for the top 10 Summer Olympic sports:

Artistic gymnastics

Mississippi
New Jersey
Arizona
New York
Washington
Florida
Texas
California
Georgia
Ohio

Swimming

Hawaii
Minnesota
Wyoming
Alaska
Wisconsin
Utah
Colorado
Pennsylvania
North Dakota
Vermont

Diving

Hawaii
Indiana
Vermont
Wyoming
North Dakota
Minnesota
Montana
Massachusetts
New Hampshire
Connecticut

Rhythmic gymnastics

Massachusetts
New York
Minnesota
Washington
Kansas
California
Oregon
Nevada
Illinois
Florida

Beach volleyball

Hawaii
Nebraska
Arizona
Louisiana
Florida
Kansas
California
Alabama
Missouri
Idaho

Basketball

Iowa
Nebraska
Kentucky
Indiana
Kansas
North Carolina
Alabama
South Dakota
Wisconsin
Connecticut

Boxing

Nevada
California
New Mexico
Texas
New Jersey
Arizona
Maryland
New York
Delaware
Hawaii

Athletics

Vermont
South Dakota
Maine
New Hampshire
Indiana
Ohio
Massachusetts
Connecticut
Iowa
Kansas

Baseball

Mississippi
Louisiana
Arkansas
Alabama
South Carolina
Nebraska
Tennessee
Oklahoma
West Virginia
North Carolina

Synchronized swimming

Montana
Minnesota
Oregon
Ohio
South Carolina
Massachusetts
New Jersey
North Carolina
Missouri
Pennsylvania

While the number and type of sports have grown over the last 3,000 years, the love of the Olympics has endured. In Ancient Greece, 50,000 people came to watch the games. Today, over 1 billion will watch the XXXIII Olympiad in Paris. As a whole, the world loves soccer (futbol, football). Each country has its favorite sport, and each U.S. state has a favorite, too. What will you be watching?

Methodology

The world’s favorite Summer Olympic sports

To determine the most popular Summer Olympic sport worldwide we collected data from eight sources that had complied data on the subject: Athletics Weekly, Bleacher Report, International Olympic Committee, IPSOS, Tallent Backer, Play Today, Sports Foundational, and World Atlas. We used an average to develop a final list.

Favorite Summer Olympic sports in each country

We looked at two data sets.

Firstly, we used data compiled by ABCD Agency. Their source data came from Rascasse, an AI-powered consumer insights platform that analyzes the number of likes on digital platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Rascasse also analyzes search behavior on Google and Bing and streaming activity on YouTube and Spotify. The data included the most popular sport in each country but was not necessarily associated with the Olympics. From this data, we included only sports played in the Summer Olympics.

The second data set came from Ipsos Group (Institut Public de Sondage d’Opinion Secteur) a multinational market research and consulting firm headquartered in Paris, France. This data included surveys in 28 countries that asked about preferences in the 2020 Tokoy Summer Olympics.

A difference in alignment between the Rascasse data of generally preferred sports and Ipsos Group’s preferred 2020 Tokoy Summer Olympics was evident.

America’s favorite Summer Olympic sport

We compiled the top five favorite Summer Olympic sports in the U.S. from a combination of data collected by Statista, Most followed Summer Olympic sports among fans in the United States as of March 2021, and YouGov, Global data: Look at the most-followed Olympic sports.

Statista data consists of information collected from Jan. 1 to March 31, 2021, via online interviews with individuals 18 years and older. The sample size varies between 295 and 11,074, depending on the country (Statista, 2022).

YouGov data consists of “Interviews conducted between January 1 and March 31, 2021. Sample sizes were between 295 and 11,074. The Global Fan Profiles tool is available in the following markets: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Columbia, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, UK, UAE, USA, and Vietnam. All data is nationally representative except for data from: Egypt, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, and India, where data is representative of the urban populations.” (Graeme, 2021).

Preferred Olympic sports by state

Direct data was not found on which Summer Olympic sport is most popular in each U.S. state. We used Google Trends to determine which of the 10 most popular Summer Olympic sports in the U.S. (see list above) was most searched for.