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Which sports have the most professionals worldwide?

  • 03-03-2013 4:32pm
    #1
    Hematocyte
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 327 ✭✭


    I was just thinking about how in the NFL that there is 32 teams each with about 50 or so active players on their books. Just with scratch maths that makes about 1500 active players in a country of 300million, which is very few.

    AFAIK American football goes highschool -> college -> NFL, so those 1500 pretty much are pretty much the entire pool of pro players at any given time?I know there's a few other things like Arena football but basically you seem to have very few people earning a living playing what is a huge sport in that country.

    Anyway, it got me thinking that I wanted to delve into this idea further and see how many people worldwide earn a full-time living playing sport? However, I was finding it unusually difficult to find something that lists the number of professionals in ALL sports by country and by sport.

    So for instance I'm counting a guy in India who may earn peanuts playing cricket so long as that is his full time job. I'm not associated professionals like managers, doctors, scouts etc. I'm not counting amateurs like GAA players and I'm not interested in guys who maybe play in the LOI and need to do other work to supplement their income.

    I was wondering if anyone here had seen such statistics? Thanks


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