What is the Best Sport?

I actually don’t watch sports much at all. I like doing the activity rather than watching them. However, here is my list all sports by watchability from an interactivity, audience experience, and difficulty or easability of making the sport watchable from a production perspective.

Categorical Classification Rankings

1. 1v1 or Combative
2. Performative (I put this distinction as different execution style sports are a performance rather than pure skill such as with powerlifting. For example Figure Skating,acrobatics > Diving > Weightlifting)
3. Team based sports
4. Technical sports
5. Racing

Solid Watchability

• Tag Games - Competitive Tag
• Both physical and mind - Chess Boxing
• Dodgeball
• Combat Sports - Wresting/Martial Arts/Fencing
• Acrobatic Arts - Dancing/Cheerleading/Figure Skating
• Drone Racing
• Gymnastics - Balance beam/Pommel Horse/Horizontal Bar
• Parkour/Free running - Ninja Warrior
• Basket Ball/Handball
• American Football/Rugby
• Skating Sports - Ice Skating/Roller Skating
• Board Sports - Skateboarding/Snowboarding/Surfing
• Esports [heavy personal bias here, I really think it depends on the game]
• Hockey/Lacrosse

Medium Watchability

• Animal Sports - Horse/Dog [any sort of racing would be low in nature, look to my comment on motorsports]
• Athletics - Jumping/Throwing/Running
• Ball games - Baseball/Cricket/Longball
• Billiards
• Boules Sport - Curling/Bocce/Shuffleboard
• Soccer/European Football [slower paced hockey, if I were European this probably would be higher]
• Polo
• Climbing - Competitive Rock Climbing
• Flying disc sports - Disc Golf/Frisbee
• Sports that use a non-netted racket, or paddle - Table Tennis(Ping Pong) [Faster in nature]
• Sports that use a netted racket - Badminton/Tennis/Volley Ball
• Cycling - Bicycle
• Snow Sports - Skiing/Sled
• Stacking - Card/Duce/Cup Stacking
• Water sports - Water Polo/Competitive Swimming/Diving (water polo is a goal sport, swimming is a race, diving is a technical sport)

Background Noise - Low Watchability

• Mind Sports - Card Games/Rubik Cube/Excel [while they are all highly engaging to play I don’t think they’re as engaging to watch]
• Strategy Board Games - (I’m looking at you chess)
• Air Sports - Aerobatics / Parachuting
• Paddling Sports - Canoeing/Kayaking/Rafting/Rowing/Sailing
• Motorsports - Aircraft/Motorboat/Automobile/Motorcycle/Formula One/NASCAR/MotoGP (I feel like this sport is an excuse for people stacked with cash to have a tax write-off for marketing expenses by sponsoring a team. With the exception of Redbull because that seems to be their “philanthropic” business model that so happens to be marketing because if anything goes wrong their brand is directly attached to it.)
• Walking - For some reason race walking exist
• Strength Sports - Strongman/Arm Wresting/Weightlifting (While impressively technical in feat it’s really a solo journey and we are watching the final product)
• Golf
• Shooting - Archery/Gun
• Fishing (slightly less watchable than golf)
• Hunting (morally questionable at best)
• Bowling

Not Applicable

• Mixed Disciplines - Triathlon
• Orienteering - Geocaching
• Quidditch - Harry Potter
• Comment: Fighting is combative in nature and I would not classify it directly as a sport in this ranking. For example, fencing, sword dueling, or bull-leaping would be in this exception

Where I got the list from (the rankings are my own): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sports