Although ticket prices for all sports events have gone up over the past years, sports fans are still willing to pay more. However, US sports fans continue spending way more money on buying tickets than any other nation.

According to data presented by SportsLens.com, US sports fans are expected to spend a whopping $13bn buying tickets to watch matches live at stadiums or two and a half times more than Britons, Chinese, Japanese, and Canadians combined.

US Sports Fans to Spend an Average of $300 on Sports Tickets, 3x More than the Global Average

Due to the surging sports ticket prices, the revenue in the global sports events market has jumped by almost 60% between 2017 and 2022, rising from $17.3bn to $27.2bn worldwide. This includes revenues from online sales of tickets for all professional sporting events, from football, basketball, baseball, and other ball sports, to golf, tennis, Formula 1, and NASCAR. The US sports ticket market has had a major role in this revenue growth.

According to Statista Digital Market Insights, in 2023, sports fans worldwide will spend close to $29bn buying tickets to watch sports matches live at stadiums, and 45% of that value will come from the United States. As the single largest sports events market, the United States has seven times higher revenue than the United Kingdom, whose sports fans are expected to spend $1.83bn to watch matches live this year. As the third-largest market, China will see $1.68bn in revenue. Japan and Canada follow, with $1.15bn and $1.11bn, respectively.

Statista expects global sports ticket sales revenue to grow by 8% in the next two years and hit $31.2bn in 2025. The US market is forecast to see a 6.7% growth in this period and close to $14bn in revenue.

The Statista survey also showed US sports fans would spend an average of $298.8 on sports tickets this year or three times the global average of $96.5. Europeans will pay around $140 to attend sports events, while the Chinese will spend six times less than that. The United Kingdom is the only European country close to the United States when talking about buying sports tickets. In 2023, Britons are expected to spend an average of $228 on buying sports tickets, or $70 less than US sports fans.

One in Six People Buying Sports Tickets in 2023 is from the United States

Besides revenue growth, the sports events market has also seen a considerable increase in the number of people buying tickets to watch matches live in stadiums. Since 2017, more than 41 million people started buying sports tickets online, pushing the total user count to over 300 million this year.

Statistics also show that one in six people buying sports tickets in 2023 is from the United States, which counts 43.8 million users as of this year. Although far below the US in revenue, China will see almost 70 million users in 2023. Japan, the United Kingdom, and Canada follow, with 12.3 million, 8 million, and 4.5 million users in the sports events market, respectively.