New York Leads U.S. Cities Consuming the Most Sports-Related Content

New Yorkers do a lot of scrolling when it comes to sports.

45% of Americans have reportedly made reducing screen time their New Year's resolution, however, a lot of us are still spending hours online, often doomscrolling.

Also See: New York Among Nation's Most Honest Gaming States

Doomscrolling means spending excessive time compulsively consuming negative news and upsetting content online, often leading to increased anxiety, sadness, or fear, and was popularized during the COVID-19 pandemic as people scrolled through pandemic-related headlines. It's a self-perpetuating cycle where upsetting news prompts more scrolling, driven by a need to stay informed but ultimately fueling distress, often through social media's infinite scroll features.  

But just how much sports content are Americans consuming?

To answer that, we at Hard Rock Bet analyzed social media data from all of 2025 to identify the U.S. cities consuming the most sports-related content.

And, New York City leads the pack with over 13 billion sports-related social media posts consumed every year. That's a lot of scrolling!

The cities consuming the most sports content online:

All the data from this study can be found onsite here: https://www.hardrock.bet/news/cities-that-watch-the-most-sports-content-online/

Methodology

The analysis used data from Brandwatch to identify which U.S. cities consume the most sport-related content online. Using Brandwatch’s Reach tool, we tracked mentions and interactions related to major sports topics and teams over the past 12 months.

Brandwatch’s Reach metric estimates the potential audience size for posts or conversations across social platforms, based on engagement metrics such as likes, shares, and retweets, combined with publicly available platform data and proprietary modelling.

Get our free mobile app

To ensure fair comparison between cities of different sizes, average viewership rate was calculated by dividing the total estimated reach of sports-related content in each city by its population. This allowed them to identify which locations have the highest concentration of sports content consumption relative to their size.