POKER

Sports Fans Put to the Test

By Marcus Harmon
June 01, 2021

We all know that there’s some overlap between folks who love poker and other card games and folks who love sports. Poker rooms are often littered with flat screen TVs broadcasting popular sporting events, and many of these rooms are even specifically located next to the casino sports book. As such, the topic of this article is one that likely resonates with poker lovers. Specifically, HowToBet.com recently took on the nearly impossible task of studying the average intelligence of sports fans in the United States. There have been plenty of studies or tests done to show sports knowledge, but this study simply measured IQ.

sports betting poker

There were 1,006 sports fans observed during this study, and all of them had to have an allegiance to a specific team or athlete in the United States. Specifically, fans had to follow the sports of MLB, NASCAR, NBA, NFL, NHL, or WWE.

The four major professional sports in the United States all have fans that claim to be the smartest, but that is not what this survey revealed. The numbers are in, and — believe it or not — it is WWE that has the fans with the highest average intelligence. 

Here are the results for the remote study given by HowtoBet:

  • WWE 112.6
  • NHL 112.3
  • NBA 110.7
  • NFL 105.9
  • MLB 101.3
  • NASCAR 95.2

Source: https://www.howtobet.com/most-intelligent-sportsfans/

These results show that WWE and NHL fans are extremely close in average intelligence, and both sports were well above the rest of the pack. Breaking the numbers down even further shows just how impressive WWE fans were on this test.

Questions were given in four different categories, and WWE fans scored the highest in both verbal intelligence and logical reasoning. That sport also had the second-highest score in mathematical ability and visual reasoning.

READ MORE: Top 10 WWE Superstars I’d Hate to Play Poker with

The National Hockey League led the two categories where the WWE finished in second place but fell to third place in the others. These two sports clearly have fans that are much more intelligent than the other sports in the US.

NFL fans were able to score the second-highest amount of points in the category of verbal intelligence, and that comes in handy when cheering for their favorite teams. The NBA fans scored the second-most points in the category of logical reasoning, which helped out the overall score.

All of that kind of makes you wonder how “poker fans” would score, eh?

Women Smarter Than Men?

Men and women have been debating intelligence levels for centuries, and that is a discussion that is not worth getting into most of the time. This survey, interestingly, had no trouble answering that question, at least when it comes to male and female sports fans: Female sports fans have an average IQ score of 109.6, while males scored just 105.5 on this study.

Female sports fans led the way in the categories of mathematical ability and logical reasoning, while the males led in verbal intelligence and visual reasoning. The breakdown in the total score came from females posting much better overall results in all categories. We all know that there are more men who play poker than women, but perhaps these results might indicate those women who do play on average possess higher IQs than their male counterparts at the felt.

This study did not break down the average IQ scores of fans in different age groups, but that could have provided some interesting results as well.

NASCAR Sees Caution Flag

While most sports fans or leagues won’t care about the results of this study, NASCAR might want to pay attention to these results and look to make some changes. This sport was clearly in last place with this study, and the numbers were borderline embarrassing.

Logical reasoning was the only category that NASCAR did not score last place in, and they were still just fourth with those questions. These results won’t do anything to help the perception or belief that there is a lack of intelligence with fans of this sport.

Not only did the entire sport of NASCAR struggle, but three of its most famous teams had the lowest average IQ scores of other teams or athletes. Food for thought, indeed.

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Marcus Harmon poker author
Written By.

Marcus Harmon

Marcus Harmon is a poker writer and editor of Sunshine Poker Rooms, a poker news and information source. With a decade of experience in the online gaming industry, Marcus has been lucky enough to have met and indeed been beaten by some of the great players. His other passions are soccer and travel.

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