Just how popular is Basketball?

Globally, I reckon it is 2nd behind football, outwith the anomaly of India's 1 billion cricket followers. We just don't see it that way in the UK.

Probably similar to how the US/NZ folk see "soccer" - from their perspective its a minority sport, but of course globally it is king.

I ask because there is some debate as to what it the worlds 3rd biggest sports event. I think any whichever sport happens to be in town at the time claims this moniker, so Rugby World Cup is touting itself as no 3. But I think globally rugby is way, way behind basketball.

Basketball is, globally, a much bigger sport than rugby. However it does not have the massive "event".

Is RWC the 3rd biggest sporting event in the world - depending on how you choose to calculate that Yes and No. It is still a minority sport.

Why eliminate Cricket? It's not just #1 in India. Pakistan, and Bangladesh have about 350 million between them, and it's trumps there? I don't like "if you ignore", stats.

Interestingly though, I don't know if B-ball is bigger than Rugby. Here's why: B-ball has a world championship, and an Olympic event. The fact that neither have really caught on to me suggest that while more kids worldwide may know who Kobe Bryant is, than who Richie McCaw is... I think the average NBA fan needed to click Google search for the entire world cup last year, while the average rugby fan will probably know most of the players in the top ten teams.

It appears to be massively popular here in Hong Kong.

When I look out of the office window, it looks down on 12 basketball courts in a complex. 12 basketball courts take up an awful lot of room. They are full from 06:00 in the morning till when I have been leaving around 18:00 in the evening. When I say full, I mean full. Every court, all day long. A constant stream of people coming in and playing.

I assume you book for an hour or something like that. There are what look like official teams playing each other (amateur I guess) and kids just playing small games or one on one matches. There is not a minute that goes by that any of the courts are not occupied. Pretty much all the young to middle age men in the office play (locals anyway) and quite a few of the women.

They asked me if fancied joining them in a game t'other night. I politely declined. I didn't want to embarrass anybody.....

Basketball is massive through much of Europe with pro leagues in many countries. It is not just a case of NBA. It is also massive in China.

Yes, I realise it's popular in China, But I chose to ignore it because it's an anomaly with one billion people