In the world of sports events, Americans are undoubtedly the biggest spenders. Last year, US sports fans spent more than $14.2bn on buying sports tickets online, including football, basketball, baseball, motorsports, golf, and tennis. And while ticket prices for almost all sports events are going up, Americans are still willing to pay more.
According to data presented by CasinosEnLigne.com, US sports fans are expected to spend a whopping $15.4bn on sports tickets by the end of 2023, or $1.2bn more than last year.
US Sports Fans to Spend $6B more on Buying Tickets than in 2017
Thanks to rising players` salaries and eye-popping costs of building new stadiums, sports ticket prices have skyrocketed over the past few years. Along with ticket scalping or buying tickets to resell them at a higher price, watching sports matches live at a stadium has become impossible for an average fan. But it seems Americans are willing to dig even deeper in their pockets as they continue spending more money on sports tickets than any other nation.
According to a Statista survey, US sports fans spent roughly $9bn buying tickets online in 2017. Two years later, this figure jumped to over $10.7bn. After a huge drop in 2020, caused by massive cancellations of sports events amid the COVID-19 lockdowns, the revenue in the US sports event market surged to $14.2bn last year. Statistics show Americans will spend around $15.4bn on sports tickets this year, or $6bn more than in 2017. This figure is set to grow by another 18% in the next four years and hit $18.3bn by 2027.
The Statista survey also showed that Americans spent two times more money on sports tickets than Europeans. In 2023, European sports fans will spend over $7.41bn on watching matches live at stadiums, roughly $500 million more than last year. This figure will rise to $8.4bn in the next four years.
Nearly Half of Global Sports Tickets Spending Comes from the United States
As the world`s highest-spending sports nation, the United States has a lion`s share in global sports ticket sales revenue. Statista expects sports ticket sales to bring $31.8bn in revenue this year, and more than 45% of that value will come from the United States. Moreover, statistics show the US sports event industry will gross 2.5 times more revenue than the next four largest markets combined.
Far below, the United Kingdom ranked as the second-largest sports events market, with $2.4bn in revenue, r$700 million more than third-ranked China. Japan and Canada follow with $1.15bn and $1.11bn in revenue, respectively.
