Most Popular Sports in England: Football, Cricket & More

Walk into any pub on a Saturday afternoon and you’ll find out fast which sport actually runs England. Football wins on every count that matters: how many people play it, how many watch it, how much space it takes up in daily conversation. Cricket, rugby union, tennis, and golf follow, each with its own devoted following, while Sport England’s participation data adds walking, cycling, and swimming to the top of the list.

How we ranked England’s most popular sports

“Popular” pulls in two directions, so this ranking weighs both. Participation comes from Sport England’s Active Lives Survey, which counts how many adults do an activity at least twice a month. Spectator popularity is judged on attendance, broadcast audiences, and cultural reach — the sports that fill stadiums and dominate summer headlines. Football tops both lists, but the two measures diverge sharply lower down: cricket and rugby rank far higher for watching than for playing, while walking and cycling top participation without being spectator sports at all.

Why football leads all sports in England

The Football Association was founded in 1863, which makes England the place where the modern game’s rules were first written down. That head start still shows. The Premier League pulls in overseas audiences that dwarf its domestic one, and at grassroots level the game barely pauses: Sunday league fixtures, school competitions, five-a-side bookings on a Tuesday night. Sport England’s Active Lives data records around 2.1 million adults in England playing football regularly as of 2025.

The national team draws some of the biggest broadcast audiences in English television history whenever a World Cup or European Championship rolls around, regardless of how the team is actually playing that year.

Top sports in England at a glance

Sport	Governing Body	Popularity Basis
Football	The FA	Largest participation and spectator base
Cricket	England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB)	National summer sport; Test, ODI, T20 formats
Rugby Union	Rugby Football Union (RFU)	Strong club and international following
Tennis	Lawn Tennis Association (LTA)	Wimbledon boosts annual participation
Golf	England Golf	Widespread recreational participation
Athletics	UK Athletics	High interest during major championships
Cycling	British Cycling	High participation on road and track
Swimming	Swim England	One of the highest participation activities overall
Padel	LTA	Fastest-growing racket sport as of 2025

Cricket: England’s national summer sport

Cricket is England’s summer game in a way nothing else quite is. The national team plays all three international formats — Test, ODI, and T20 — and the county system underneath gives the sport a professional domestic ladder that football’s academy setup doesn’t really mirror. The Hundred, launched in 2021, was a deliberate attempt to pull in viewers who’d never sat through a full Test match, and it has stuck around and drawn strong crowds.

The men’s Test side, playing the aggressive “Bazball” style under coach Brendon McCullum, remains a talking point after a heavy 4-1 defeat in the 2025-26 Ashes in Australia, but the sport’s national reach through summer is undiminished.

Rugby union and rugby league

Rugby union runs deep in counties like Gloucestershire and Somerset and across much of the southwest, where club loyalty gets passed down like a family trade. The national team’s fixtures in the Six Nations and the Rugby World Cup reliably pull large audiences, win or lose.

Rugby league lives a different life entirely, concentrated in Yorkshire and Lancashire, with a fan base that’s smaller in number but no less committed. The two codes share a name and little else in terms of culture or geography.

Tennis, golf, and other major sports

Tennis has an odd rhythm: interest spikes hard every summer around Wimbledon, the oldest tournament in the sport, then settles back down. The LTA’s network of clubs and public courts keeps the game accessible the rest of the year, even if many people only pick up a racket during those two weeks.

Golf has hundreds of courses across the country and a steady base of members and casual players. Athletics, cycling, and swimming fill out the picture, and Sport England’s Active Lives Survey keeps finding cycling and swimming near the top of the list for regular participation, year after year, alongside walking, running, and fitness classes.

Current picture: what’s rising in 2025-26

The most dramatic recent story is padel. LTA figures show around 860,000 people played padel at least once during 2025 — more than double the 400,000 a year earlier — with courts passing 1,500 across over 550 venues by the end of the year, up from just 69 when the LTA took over the sport’s governance in 2020. Awareness reached 57% of British adults, and it is now firmly Britain’s fastest-growing racket sport.

Women’s football is the other standout. England’s Lionesses retained their European title at UEFA Women’s Euro 2025, beating Spain on penalties to become the first England senior team to win a major tournament on foreign soil. Coming three years after their Euro 2022 win at home, the back-to-back triumph has driven record numbers of girls and women into grassroots clubs. Mixed martial arts and esports continue to build real audiences too, particularly among younger fans who didn’t grow up on the traditional Saturday-afternoon sports.

Why England’s sporting mix endures

England’s sporting identity holds because it layers old and new. Football’s 160-year head start keeps it unassailable at the top, cricket and rugby anchor the summer and autumn calendar, and racket and endurance sports quietly account for the biggest participation numbers. What keeps the picture fresh is the churn beneath the surface — padel courts multiplying, women’s football filling stadiums — proving the country’s appetite for sport is still growing, not just repeating.