ESPN World Fame 100

[ALI]

So ESPN make an annual list of the world's most famous athlete's. The criteria is:

• Google search scores (how much an athlete spiked on his most-searched day as well as how much he was searched on average);
• Endorsement dollars;
• Social media following

http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/ ... e-100-2019

Contrary to what certain promoters would have us believe, the face of boxing today is none other than Deontay Wilder! Comes as a surpirise, Fast Car must be choking on his chips upon hearing this.

Football, Basketball, Tennis, MMA, Golf, Cricket, F1, and even Snowboarding all feature higher profile sporting stars than Boxing does in todays world. Sad but true. One champion per division could change all that i'm sure, our current watered down system of champions might help the ABC's and promoters, and i guess fighters too, but it does not help in growing the popularity of our sport or the boxers.

[jamamb]

lol pac is still way more famous then wilder. his last fight actually did 100k more us ppvs then the supposedly huge wilder vs fury did

if wilder was the face of boxing he wouldnt have been earning 1-2m for the last several years. i dont see how money or social media make him the face of boxing

it was probably the google searches from ppl trying to find out who the hell he is. 34th most famous athlete in the world is laughable

[ALI]

lol pac is still way more famous then wilder

if wilder was the face of boxing he wouldnt have been earning 1-2m for the last several years. i dont see how money or social media make him the face of boxing

it was probably the google searches from ppl trying to find out who the hell he is. 34th most famous athlete in the world is laughable

I've searched a lot of fighters, never once have i typed Wilders name in a search engine, ever.

Khabib being so high on the list proves how massive his fight with McGregor was, and the impact it can have on a persons following and popularity globally. Two titans of the MMA world colliding, one champion, one division.

Fury and Wilder being the highest ranked boxers shows the popularity their fight generated.

These two examples are proof the big fights need to get made. They shine a light on our sport and draw in the casuals and the non boxing fans. To many titles, tv networks, promoters ruins our sport, and all to often this mixture of competing interests prevents the big fights from happening, and boxing suffers because of it, and is the reason, IMO, we are so low on this list of global sporting superstars.

Who would have thought, just a couple of years or so ago, that MMA would rank above boxing on a list like this?

[ALI]

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[Datsue]

it was probably the google searches from ppl trying to find out who the hell he is.

As to the OP: the methodology of this is fvcking laughable. The criteria are largely arbitrary, there is no method as to how the aforesaid largely arbitrary criteria are weighted against each other (i.e. if I get two million more innernetz searches than you but you have 12,000 more Instabook followers, am I more famous than you? Who the fvck knows?) & the whole thing is ridiculously US-centric...

It's about on the level of one of those tabloid "Hottest woman in the world" lists & I can't believe anyone but someone with a seriously addled brain would even give it the time of day, let alone use it as ammunition for "proving" anything.

[jamamb]

spence vs garcia did better us ppvs then wilder-fury too it seems

[ALI]

it was probably the google searches from ppl trying to find out who the hell he is.

As to the OP: the methodology of this is fvcking laughable. The criteria are largely arbitrary, there is no method as to how the aforesaid largely arbitrary criteria are weighted against each other (i.e. if I get two million more innernetz searches than you but you have 12,000 more Instabook followers, am I more famous than you? Who the fvck knows?) & the whole thing is ridiculously US-centric...

It's about on the level of one of those tabloid "Hottest woman in the world" lists & I can't believe anyone but someone with a seriously addled brain would even give it the time of day, let alone use it as ammunition for "proving" anything.

I would not right it off so easily. There is no real way to rank accurately personalities popularities with any real accuracy, but criteria like number of google searches surely gives an indication of sorts, as does endorsement deals, and dare i say it - i actually hate to say it, but number of social media followers must also mean something. Gaining X amount of millions of followers cannot come about easily, it would require a lot of publicity to get that going i would think, which all points towards popularity.

The list can hardly be US centric when it is dominated by football players and cricketers, two sports nobody cares about stateside. The criteria also does not allow for the list to be US centric. Perhaps because the US has a large population that heavily uses the internet, this could possibly be a factor that favours US sportpeople ranking higher on the list.

[jamamb]

well even if it were us centric wilder - fury wasnt even as big in the us as pac-broner or garcia-spence, both outsold it

[Boxerbeetle]

This list states Fury has a ‘Social Following’ of 21.5 million! Considering he only has 1 million Twitter followers (incidentally, Joshua has 2.5 million Twitter followers and Wilder a paltry 450k), I must cast some doubt over the veracity of its statistical analysis.

[jamamb]

lol thats what i dont get

i mean aj makes way more and has more social media followers. so are fury and wilder the google kings or what? im really not sure any of the hws is that famous worldwide either, like, there really arent more then 33 more famous athletes from other sports?

id bet pac is still the most famous active boxer. him and floyd were globally mainstream in a way no others are right now

[ALI]

id bet pac is still the most famous active boxer. him and floyd were globally mainstream in a way no others are right now

Agree'd, they should be more widely recognised in general, but popularity peaks and wanes, so i think this is more an indication of whats hot right now.

I never set out to be a defender of this list, i recognise there is no real way to gauge with accuracy level of fame, i just found it interesting Wilder was highest ranked boxer, and boxing as a whole was not featured much, and also topped by MMA.

I definately give it some credence, there is some substance to it, number of google searches clearly indicates a level of popularity. What i am not so sure about is the points for each of the 3 catagories and how they are divided, google searches IMO should score way higher % than endorsements and social media numbers. Still, as a global list, you have to think USA sports stars are much more favoured than those from the likes of the Phillipines, where a lower % of the population have no internet access so cannot influence these figures as much.

[kbackup408]

Respectfully would like to say this is BS - I am not sure every athlete is declaring how much they make from endorsements ...

[bluenoseshf]

Rubbish like this makes the Joshua vs Wilder/Fury fights even harder to make, inflating Wilder and Furys egos to the point they think they deserve 50/50.

A quick look at their respective social media accounts tells a vastly different story. Joshua beats both combined in the 3 major platforms (facebook, Twitter and Instagram) and his total followers is double fury and wilder combined

Joshua: 13.5M
Fury: 2.75M
Wilder: 2.63M