This week marks the first drop of ticket sales for the 2028 Summer Olympics, to be held in Los Angeles. While LA28 is just at the start of building buzz for one of the world’s largest live sporting events, that’s far from the only major sports moment on Americans’ calendars. In addition to the yearly national sports seasons, this summer, Atlanta will host the FIFA World Cup–another prime opportunity for American sports fans to get their live event fix, closer to home. 

But how often do American consumers attend live sporting events? Current CivicScience data show that just 16% of respondents attend a sporting event once a month or more. Nearly 4 in 10 (39%) attend a few times per year, while 44% never attend. 

Men are slightly more likely than women to attend once a month or more (17% vs 15%), while Gen Z outpaces all other age groups in monthly sporting event attendance by at least 17 percentage points. 

However, this data is just the start of what sets the most frequent attendees of sporting events apart from those who never attend. Here’s what the data show: 

• Travel as a Priority: Those who attend a sporting event once a month or more are 21 percentage points more likely to consider traveling for pleasure an important part of their life than those who never attend. 
• Splurging Habits: Those who attend sporting events monthly are 20 percentage points more likely to splurge on themselves than those who never attend live sporting events (85% vs 65%). They lead in splurging on experiences, whereas those who don’t attend sporting events are more likely to say they splurge on physical products. 
• Dining Out Preferences: When it comes to what they value most when dining out, those who attend sporting events frequently are more likely to value the atmosphere, level of service, and speed. Whereas those who never attend sporting events lead in saying they value diverse menu options the most.
• Ethereum Experience: Those who attend a monthly sporting event are over 6X as likely to report having experience investing in Ethereum compared to those who never attend sporting events.

Clearly, those who attend sporting events the most frequently aren’t just showing up to live games or matches. Their interest in sports shapes how and where they spend their time in all aspects of their lives.  

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This article’s data comes solely from CivicScience’s database, which contains nearly 700,000 poll questions and 5 billion consumer insights.