The popularity of mixed martial arts has become more commonplace across America each year.
Martial arts is ranked as the 25th most popular physical activity in America. More people take up martial arts than basketball!
We decided to find out exactly how popular mixed martial arts are across the USA by looking at:
- General interest in mixed martial arts in online searches
- The number of martial arts schools available in every state
- How highly rated martial arts schools are in each state
Below you will find visualizations of our research to uncover the most MMA-obsessed states in America!
You can learn about our methodology for this research here.
Top States Obsessed With Mixed Martial Arts
Hover over this interactive map to view more information about how martial arts obsessed each state is:
Key Highlights
- Despite being one of the smallest states in all of America, Hawaii is ranked 1st on our MMA-obsessed list because they tick many boxes. They rank 1st for search interest online rank 6th for the most martial arts schools per capita, of which schools have a high 4.88 average rating. With a population of 1.4 million people, it's impressive!
- Nevada ranks 2nd overall. Despite having a much bigger state than Hawaii, the population is condensed to just over 3 million people. This ranks them 15th for martial arts schools per capita, with an average rating of 4.79 of their schools.
- New Hampshire, New Jersey, and Rhode Island round off the top 5 states for MMA obsession. Interestingly all three lay close together on the east coast surrounding New York (which ranks 20th overall).
- California has the biggest population of some 39 million people across the state and yet ranks very highly in position 7th overall. Their 4200+ martial arts schools keep their schools per capita high at 10.80.
- Of all states, New Hampshire ranks 1st for the most martial arts schools per capita. With a population of 1.3 million people and 200+ martial arts schools, they jump right to the top of the pile with 14.71 schools per capita (100k residents). Only New Jersey comes close who have 13.67 schools per capita.
- Mississippi has the fewest number of martial arts school options, with just 4.6 martial arts schools per capita. That's 137 gyms for nearly 3 million people.
- Alabama ranks the least MMA-obsessed state, with only 5.57 martial arts schools per capita, with an average rating of 4.87 among them. And ranking 49th for interest, which brings down their final ranking massively.
States With The Most Martial Arts Schools Per Capita
See how each state is ranked based on the availability of martial arts schools per capita:
Data
Below you'll find the final summary of data per state for your own analysis. These are used to produce the rankings and indexing of this overall piece.
Infographic
The above image(s) are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-ND 4.0).
You are free to share, copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format for any purpose, including commercially.
Press & Media
If you want to make an enquiry about any of the data or for additional quotes on this research, contact us.
Methodology & Sources
Martial Arts Schools Per Capita: We gathered Google My Business profiles that matched one of the following types:
- martial arts
- martial arts club
- martial arts school
- boxing club
- boxing gym
- kickboxing school
- muay thai boxing gym
- karate club
- karate school
- wrestling school
- freestyle wrestling
- jiu jitsu school
- jujitsu school
- judo club
- judo school
- aikido club
- aikido school
- tae kwon do school
- taekwondo school
- kung fu school
- wing chun school
- capoeira school
We then take the total number of schools, divide it by the state's total population, and times it by 100,000 to get our martial arts schools per capita.
Average Rating of Martial Arts Schools Per State: We used our martial arts schools collection (described above) to collect the star ratings for each school. We aggregated the school reviews at each star level (1-5) and created our weighted state average. Data correct as of 24th October 2022.
Population Sizes Per State: We collected an approximation of state populations from the "List of U.S. states by population. (2022, August 22)." In Wikipedia.
Interest In Mixed Martial Arts AKA "Online Searches" Per State: We obtained Interest by sub-region for the topic "Mixed martial arts" using Google Trends from 24th October 2021 to 24th October 2022.
Overall Ranking: To get a final ranking, we created an index score of Martial Arts Schools Per Capita (for each state), an Average Rating of Martial Arts School Per State, and an Interest in Mixed Martial Arts Per State. We then add these numbers together and divide by 3, to give us a final index for each state by which we can rank them.