Every day there is a large amount of sporting events all competing for our attention. Thanks to streaming and access to fast internet connections wherever we are, watching your favorite sport has never been easier.
And the interest in sports in Sweden has hardly diminished. Although official membership in organized sports associations has decreased somewhat, all research points to the fact that we both practice and consume sports like never before. In this article, we wanted to look at which sports are the most watched in Sweden in 2023.
But it’s actually harder to answer that question than you might think. There are plenty of statistics on which sports in Sweden have the most practitioners and which events have the most spectators. But answering the question of which sports are followed and watched by the most Swedes is considerably more difficult and requires a lot of qualified guesswork.
Some sports such as floorball and golf, for example, have a lot of players but a significantly smaller audience that follows matches and tournaments. Therefore, it can be difficult to get a handle on how many people actually watch a certain sport in a given year.
Perhaps this is an area for future research projects!
Football is and remains completely unharmed the most popular sport in Sweden no matter how you count. According to figures from 2022, football had almost half a million practitioners in the country. If you look at those who follow the sport and watch matches, the numbers are considerably larger.
The most watched event for which we have found figures in 2023 was the Swedish women’s national team’s dramatic round of 16 final against the USA, which was watched by 1.4 million Swedes on TV. These figures also do not include those who chose to watch the match via streaming. A large part of the country’s population follows national matches, Allsvenskan or one or more of the major international professional leagues.
Ice hockey has significantly fewer practitioners than football as it is a more expensive sport to exercise and the popularity on the women’s side is lagging after compared to football. But when it comes to how many people follow SHL and the Swedish national team in the World Cup and the Olympics, the gap for football is considerably less.
Add to this that there are plenty of Swedish hockey fans who follow their favorite teams in the NHL via streaming. Hockey is also one of the most popular sports after football when it comes to betting. So ice hockey is clearly one of the most viewed sports in Sweden.
Athletics’ popularity among Swedish viewers fluctuates strongly depending on how much success Sweden currently has. But there are many Swedes who always follow Swedish athletes during the World Cup and the Olympics. When Sweden has superstars such as Armand Duplantis, the viewership figures are considerably higher. Add to this that there are many athletics gala during the year that attract all viewers so athletics are always popular.
Handball is a team sport with an incredibly strong culture in Sweden. There are many places where the local handball club is one of the oldest and most viable sports associations and on the youth side, handball is always popular. When it comes to how many people watch handball, especially at club level, the sport is somewhat in the background compared to football and ice hockey.
The sport had a real heyday during the 90s when large parts of the population sat down every time the national team played an Olympic or World Cup match. Nowadays, Sweden is not as successful at national team level, but a new generation of players has begun to win the hearts of Swedish sports fans.
Sweden is a historically successful swimming nation with a large number of practitioners at both elite and amateur levels. There are plenty of rich swimming clubs with a large number of members in most major places in the country. However, it is mainly international competitions that attract the larger viewership figures.
Sweden has next always clear medal chances every time it is a great championship and with world stars such as Sarah Sjöström it is no wonder that the sport has a large audience in the viewers sofas.
Martial arts are something of a bubbler on this list. But if we count on all types of martial arts such as wrestling, boxing, judo and modern MMA, martial arts have a much larger audience than you might think. It is not very much a broadcast on television, but in streaming it is much more popular and a large amount, especially among the younger viewers, follows MMA competitions such as UFC, especially when Swedish fighters are on the carpet. The day we get a Swedish champion in a larger organization, there is potential for MMA to grow further in the country. Traditional martial arts such as wrestling are seen mainly during the Olympics.