Six Nations Tops YouGov Sport’s 2021 Buzz Report
YouGov Sport has released its annual UK Buzz ranking, which lists the sporting events which generated the most positive buzz amongst the British public in 2020.
The 2021 rankings reflect the changed nature of the sporting calendar in a truncated year, as sport dealt with postponements, lockdowns and stadiums without fans.
The Guinness Six Nations was postponed part-way through due to the escalation of the coronavirus pandemic in Europe in March 2020 and completed in October after a seven-month delay – the first time any match in the competition had been postponed since 2012.
The Premier League took second spot as it restarted in June as part of ‘Project Restart’, while England’s Test cricket matches – played behind closed doors in a bio-secure bubble – took third spot just behind.
The German Bundesliga rose to fourth place on the list, with its position as the first major football competition to restart after lockdown contributing to its high score.
Last year’s Buzz Ranking winner, Wimbledon, managed to take the 11th spot in the list, with YouGov noting that, in a year when the event was cancelled and did not take place at all, its ability to remain part of the conversation is notable.
Commenting on the research, Charlie Dundas, Commercial Director at YouGov Sport, a Category Partner of the Sport Industry Awards, said: “The sports industry had one of its hardest years ever in 2020, with many events having to be postponed, delayed or even cancelled. The ranking’s first placed event, the Men’s Six Nations Rugby Championship, had a seven-month delay between matches as a result of the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic.
“However, while COVID-19 interrupted many annual events, it also contributed to their placing on the rankings. Many of the top ten placed in the month that they restarted after strict lockdown restrictions ended, such as the English Premier League. Sport-starved Britons looking for matches to watch in lockdown led to the Bundesliga ranking in fourth place in the UK, despite Germany’s primary football competition never featuring in our top ten before.
“While the pandemic may have interfered with 2020’s sporting line up, it may have also helped to increase interest for sporting teams, events and leagues once they were able to restart.”
YouGov Sport, which also provides a timely Stat of the Week for Sport Industry Group every Thursday, measures the public’s perception of sports teams, events and leagues daily, compiling the highest four-week average Buzz scores to create the rankings. The scores are a net measure of whether respondents have heard positive and negative news about an event or sports property in the last fortnight.
