r/AskBrits • u/Numerous_Reading1825 • 5h ago
Rugby or Cricket: which one is the second most popular sport?
Hello mates!
Obviously I know football is the most popular sport in England, but I'm curious about the second one.
Is it rugby or cricket? Is it another one?
Do people care about it to the point of talking about it on the streets, like football?
Thanks :)
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u/neilm1000 Brit 🇬🇧 3h ago
Depends what metric you're using. Is it number of spectators at events/games? How much money is bet on it it? How many hours of dedicated TV and radio coverage? How many people play on a regular basis? Are we talking team sports only?
The answer to all of those varies.
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u/Dismal-Ladder9388 2h ago
I'm England it is probably cricket, but UK wide it's Rugby union. Rugby is more popular than football in Wales. Cricket is actually quite popular at an ameteur/recreational level in Scotland, but practically non existent at the top competitive level, whereas the Rugby team draws bigger crowds than the national football team does.
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u/CaptQuakers42 1h ago
I don't think rugby is more popular in Wales. Considering there is no professional team in North Wales and the WRU and talking about cutting a team in the South I don't think it's doing amazing there.
Football has numerous professional teams in both North and South and they are all really well supported as are the larger English teams.
At international level it may be the other way around but since the Welsh mens rugby teams have fallen off and the football team have improved I'm not even sure rugby is more popular there anymore.
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u/kingbeerex 34m ago
This: rugby is seen as more “culturally” Welsh but I really don’t think it’s clear cut as to which is the bigger sport
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u/ThaddeusGriffin_ 2h ago
I’m a big fan of both rugby (union) and cricket and would say it’s this:
Rugby Union has a bigger “day to day” following. Far higher aggregate attendance across the season. England/Scotland/Wales matches constantly sell out. Top tier rugby games in England - as someone else said - get attendances roughly similar to L1 football, while even third tier matches can get 1k crowds.
Cricket though is most people’s second favourite sport. I suspect if you took a survey of active match going football and rugby supporters of other sports they follow, cricket would be far ahead of anything else (and I actually dispute how much of an impact the pay TV deal in the 2000s had had).
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u/Agile-Read-238 32m ago
I agree with this but emphasis on cricket being the second favourite sport of England. Nobody in Scotland and wales is really watching it
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u/Sillygal8674 2h ago
I think it depends where you are but probably rugby overall.. some towns rugby is more popular than football.
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u/Wales147 1h ago
Depends on the person, rugby is first for me and I wouldn't even put football second. But cricket would be way down the list
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u/SatchSaysPlay 1h ago
I'm amazed people watch cricket, it's such a boring game, it's so bad the Americans stole it and put their own little spin on it, it has to be rugby surely ?
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u/asymmetricears 58m ago
It varies by region and country and it also depends if you mean rugby league or union.
Wales: Rugby Union is arguably the number 1 sport
Scotland: Rugby Union over Cricket
NI: I'd say Rugby Union, but I'm not too familiar.
North England: Rugby League, especially near the M62, but cricket does have reasonable popularity
South and East England: Cricket, but Rugby Union isn't far behind
West England: Rugby Union
One thing that complicates things is seasons, so its easier for people to have cricket as a second sport to play or watch if their primary sport has its season over the winter.
I think cricket only becomes popular general population conversation during the ashes and world cups, whereas Rugby Union it's really only world cups and possibly the six nations, but again this significantly varies by area.
Because of it being a summer sport, I'd edge towards cricket being in second place.
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u/flippydude 50m ago
Rugby Union isn’t close to being the number one sport in wales; just look at the state of Welsh club rugby. There is a rich rugby history, especially in the valleys, but football dominates along the south coast, where all the people are (and interestingly where all the pro rugby clubs are too).
Rugby Union is Wales’ most successful sport, but not its most popular one, in terms of attendance or player numbers.
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u/Agile-Read-238 28m ago
Yeah there’s been a massive shift after the grammar school system got removed. State schools often can’t afford the extra qualified coaches, insurance and training equipment needed for rugby. It’s taken the passion from the game from the kids for years. WRU has failed so badly at this. Say 1 in 100 kids is an athlete, they pick their sport around 11 years old, they’re not going to chose rugby if there’s no facilities nearby.
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u/Crunchie64 35m ago
Depends how you measure it.
Fishing is supposedly the “sport” with the biggest actual participation in this country, although that might be outdated now.
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u/Routine-Cicada-4949 4h ago
I'm going to say Boxing, even though I know it's not Boxing, because a big fight generates tremendous interest.
So it may not have the steady week in week out like Rugby but the UK does have 2-4 mega fights every year.
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u/Fantastic_Session911 4h ago
Cricket mostly due to the large minority desi population that live here, but rugby isn't too far behind, both are seasonal and don't overlap too much
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u/lucylucylane 3h ago
Rugby as cricket isn't even played much in Scotland
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u/axl686 2m ago
Based on government data, in terms of participation, cricket is slightly more popular than Rugby. But Rugby is more popular as a spectator sport. If you use participation as a guide both of those sports are nowhere near 2nd, Swimming and Golf have multiple times the amount of weekly participants.
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u/Garybaldbee 4h ago
In terms of match going spectators it's probably Rugby Union. England international matches attract a fair bit of interest and it was a big deal when England were world champions 20 years ago. Domestic club rugby attracts decent crowds at the very top level, equivalent to crowds at about the 3rd tier of English football. Its still not really a sport you tend to hear people talking about in the street very much but definitely has a presence in the media.
Rugby League, which is a related, but slightly different sport to Rugby Union for all sorts of social and cultural reasons, is also very popular in certain towns of the north of England but is very regionally concentrated. It barely exists elsewhere in the country.
Cricket is really difficult to define these days. (Disclaimer; I'm a cricket fan myself so this may be a bit biased). Culturally and historically it's very much the English summer sport. The classic traditional English boyhood was spent playing football in the winter and cricket in the summer. It's a sport which is deeply ingrained in the English psyche and popular imagination in a similar way to baseball in the US. It was played everywhere and the language of cricket seeped into wider use in a way unlike that of any other sport. Even today people use cricket terminology in everyday language without really even thinking about it.
But it's lost a lot of its cultural significance. Matches played by the England national cricket team used to be major national events. They still draw big crowds but outside of the cricket world no longer have very much impact. A decision to shift all the matches from free to view to pay TV in 2005 marginalised public interest in the game because it was no longer visible to most people. I suspect the average person in the street would struggle to name more than two or three current England cricketers (though the same is probably true of rugby players). The sport still has a dedicated following and one day matches between the top domestic teams can attract decent crowds. It's also been boosted by the large South Asian community in the UK who bring with them a deep love of the game. If it had a bit more visibility on free to air TV it would definitely still be our 'second' sport in terms of the national conversation but it's certainly declined sharply in recent years.
But really, nothing comes remotely close to football. It probably consumes about 90% of the national sporting interest. You'll probably only really hear people in the street talking about anything else during the Olympic games.