Shock research: Sacramento Kings among most loved NBA teams; fans top-10 happiest in U.S.
Kings fans loved their team long before the glory days in Sacramento. They filled up Arco Arena, established a sellout streak of 497 games and set records for indoor decibel levels before Geoff Petrie, Rick Adelman, Jason Williams, Peja Stojakovic, Chris Webber and Vlade Divac arrived to usher in a majestic era in Kings basketball.
Kings fans deeply loved their team then, and now, after 16 consecutive losing seasons, they love them still, according to new research from two online gaming sites. Betway Insider and Online Betting Guide recently published studies based on social media data showing the Kings are among the “most loved” teams in the NBA and their fans are among the “happiest” in all professional sports in the United States.
Betway Insider set out to determine which teams were the most loved in the NBA. The site analyzed social media data to find out “which teams are most talked about positively online,” using the Linkfluence social media listening tool “to crawl data on mentions across the internet over the past 12 months.”
Based on positive online sentiment, the study revealed the Chicago Bulls, Golden State Warriors, Orlando Magic, New York Knicks and Milwaukee Bucks are the five most popular teams in the NBA. The Kings came in at No. 8, just behind the Denver Nuggets and Los Angeles Lakers, and just ahead of the Phoenix Suns and Utah Jazz.
Online Betting Guide conducted similar research to determine which fans were the happiest among 151 major league baseball, football, basketball, hockey and soccer teams in the United States. This site used BuzzSumo and Social Blade to examine each team’s average likes on Twitter and Instagram while taking into account the ratio of “love” and “angry” reactions on Facebook.
The data showed the Kings were No. 5 in the NBA and No. 8 across all sports in “fan happiness” rankings. The Kings trailed only the Memphis Grizzlies, Bulls, Miami Heat and Warriors among NBA teams. The only other teams that topped the Kings in overall rankings were Major League Baseball’s Milwaukee Brewers and Atlanta Braves, and the National Hockey League’s Colorado Avalanche.
NBA fans were No. 1 among all sports for showing “the most love online,” followed by Major League Baseball, the NFL, Major League Soccer and the NHL.
This story was originally published July 20, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
