THE ORB HAS SPOKEN: Association Football Takes the Popularity Crown, and Beach Volleyball Is Left Shaking Sand Out of the Crystal Ball

Gather close, mortals, and mind the incense. I laid out four cards tonight: the Round Ball, the Oval Ball, the Sand Court and the Gym Floor. The question that turns sports bars into battlefields was put to the orb: which sport is more popular, football or volleyball? Not one of them was allowed to hedge. The smoke has cleared and the verdict is in. Association football takes the crown.

I'll admit this was not the most surprising vision I've ever had. The record books looked into this long before my crystal did. Wikipedia's entry on association football estimates about a quarter of a billion active players across more than two hundred countries and territories. FIFA's 2021 Vision Report goes further and claims five billion football fans around the world, with the biggest fanbases in Latin America, the Middle East and Africa. The other cards have their own runes. A Wikipedia table on sports in the United States puts volleyball's American participants ahead of American football's, and Britannica notes that where American cultural influence dominates, interest in volleyball has tended to exceed interest in soccer. The same Wikipedia page says American football has no substantial following outside the US, and it cites a 2014 Harris Poll in which the NFL came out as American fans' favourite sport. One warning from the spirits: none of these sources measures beach or indoor volleyball fandom on its own.

Now for the cards that count. On Morfi's opinion markets, where people put real money behind what they believe, Association football leads with a crowd conviction of 59%. Beach volleyball is second at 20%. Further back sit 2 other sides. That is 23 traders and $44,650 on the table, and the market opened less than a day ago. My colleague Chef Basil Brawl caught the first steam when football grabbed the early lead and beach volleyball sizzled in second. The order he saw has held.

Here comes the omen, so brace yourselves. Beach volleyball beating the NFL in the consensus? The ghosts of a thousand Super Bowl halftime shows are rattling their chains. I'm a mystic, not a statistician, and what follows is pure opinion: I think the crowd is voting with its heart. The sand court is sunshine, summer, and the Olympics on a beach. Sixty minutes of stoppages has a hard time competing with that dream. The research brief can't tell you beach volleyball has more fans than American football, because it doesn't have that data. So the crowd has made a romantic prophecy, not a proven one. As for indoor volleyball, the sport with the actual participation numbers in America, it sits in the back of the tent, wondering why nobody reads its palm.

Here's what to watch in the smoke next. The market is less than a day old, so the crown isn't locked yet. Keep an eye on whether the gridiron faithful wake up and storm past the sand, and whether indoor volleyball's fans read those participation tables and finally show up. Do you think the orb got it wrong? Step into the tent, join the market on Morfi, and put your money on your own prophecy.