Matthew Chandler, Author at SQaF: Sports Quotes and Facts

What Will Be the Most Popular Sport in the Future?

In the not-too-distant future, when families will presumably gather in their living rooms to watch holograms of sports stars jumped out at them through 3D glasses, what will they likely be watching? Which sports are growing in popularity the most at the moment? And which look on course to disappear into the shadows before long? Below, we’ll take a look at how the majority of the viewing public might consume their sport for decades to come: Which Sport Is Growing Fastest? Certainly, a contender for the fastest-growing sport in the …

Is Everton a Big Club?

With the elongated 2019-20 season thudding along to a rather anticlimactic close, there is at least one consolation. No title race, a relegation battle petering out, a question of which of the Champions League contenders can drop the least points – but alas, the battle for the coveted Everton Cup is developing into a five-horse race that’s simply too close to call. Regular listeners of the Guardian’s Football Weekly podcast will be well-versed with this piece of gallows humour; at least for Evertonians, anyway. The Everton Cup is the title …

Why is Tennis Scoring So Weird?

It’s easy in football. You just add one to the score every time your team finds the net. In rugby union you simply award five points for a try, three for a penalty or drop goal and two for a conversion kick. In cricket you need only count the number of runs scored and wickets lost by each time. All of which is pretty straightforward to get your head around. So, then, why is tennis scored 15, 30, 40? Why is it ‘love’ instead of ‘nil’? Why is it ‘deuce’ …

Are Professional Footballers Allowed to… Smoke Weed? Drink Alcohol? Bet on Sport?

Back in the day, if a footballer had a night letting his hair down, nobody would bat an eyelid. Not so anymore. Just ask Wayne Rooney. The media storm that Rooney became embroiled in after being pictured the worse for wear allegedly gatecrashing a wedding party in 2016 rather epitomised the prism with which we view elite footballers nowadays. They are not just athletes, they are role models, paragons of virtue. Indeed, Ron Atkinson summed it up best when saying in the aftermath that the sport is “still very much …

Is MMA More Popular Than Boxing?

While boxing is arguably beginning to stagnate somewhat, one of its closest competitors, mixed martial arts (MMA) is one of the fastest-growing sports in the world. Perhaps benefitting from having one dominant organisation in Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) as opposed to boxing’s ‘alphabet soup’ of titles, MMA is one of sports’ biggest successes in recent years. But what are the differences between the two? Is MMA ‘better’ than boxing? And in a UFC vs boxing ratings match, who would come on top? Differences between MMA and Boxing First and foremost, …

Which Premier League Team Has The Most Fans?

For a football league confined to only one country (or two when Swansea or Cardiff are in it), it underlines how much of a commercial success the Premier League is and has been that it attracts a global audience of roughly 4.7 billion in 212 different nations. By some distance, it is the most-watched sports division in the world. A quick jaunt around the world will make this easy to see why. For instance, even though hey may dub it ‘soccer,’ bleeding the ears of many Brits in the process, …