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As the coronavirus pandemic continues to impact our way of life in the United States and the rest of the world, we’re seeing a huge influx in the number of people engaging in fandoms, both on our site and in the wider fandom community.
In normal circumstances lots of us don’t have time to pursue our interests as much as we’d like. And while the subsequent lockdowns have been disruptive for many, the time away from ‘the outdoor world’ has given people a chance to connect with different hobbies, activities, and interests outside of their day-to-day routine.
Our site user data supports this. We’ve seen a huge increase in our unique monthly users over the past year. So, to get to the bottom of the growing global interest in fandoms, we decided to dig deeper into which fandoms were truly the biggest in the world. This is what we found…
For our research, each fandom was assigned its own unique FandomSpot (FS) score, based on three metrics: the number of subreddit sign-ups, Google Trends search terms, and social media hashtag data, relating to each fandom since March 2020. The number of new users on each fandom’s largest subreddit was given the most weighting in our formula.
Without further ado, here’s the the world’s 50 biggest fandoms, and what their FS scores are:
1) Minecraft – 34,770 2) Pokemon – 14,705 3) Animal Crossing – 13,332 4) Dungeons & Dragons – 10,922 5) Zelda – 9,954 6) Cyberpunk 2077 – 9,718 7) Marvel Studios – 9,101 8) Rick & Morty – 8,357 9) The Last Airbender – 7,551 10) GTA – 7,373 11) Game Of Thrones – 7,091 12) Star Wars – 6,597 13) Breaking Bad – 6,025 14) Family Guy – 5,446 15) The Walking Dead – 5,383 16) Attack On Titan – 4,749 17) Call Of Duty: Warzone – 4,698 18) Skyrim – 4,443 19) Halo – 4,374 20) Fortnite – 4,370 21) Harry Potter – 4,094 22) Disney – 4,090 23) One Punch Man – 3,491 24) Red Dead Redemption – 3,408 25) The Mandalorian – 3,295 26) FIFA – 2,745 27) The Sims – 2,566.50 28) LOTR – 2,457.50 29) Fallout – 2,330 30) The Witcher – 2,280.50 31) Batman – 1,622 32) Final Fantasy – 1,593 33) Dark Souls – 1,524 34) Yu-Gi-Oh – 1,477 35) Simpson – 1,467 36) Death Note – 1,349 37) RuneScape – 1,316 38) Studio Ghibli – 1,277 39) Steven Universe – 1,218 40) Star Trek – 1,106 41) Metal Gear Solid – 1,069 42) Futurama – 1,054 43) Line Of Duty – 1,028 44) Doctor Who – 1,026 45) Tekken – 1,018 46) Friends – 995 47) SpongeBob – 990 48) Super Mario – 986 49) Street Fighter – 911 50) Stranger Things – 726
When we analyzed the Subreddit data, Minecraft had the highest number of sign-ups, with more than 2.2m new members joining since March 2020, an increase of 80% – it’s worth keeping in mind that the game was originally released back in 2011!
The next highest was Pokémon, with nearly 950,000 new members signing up to the r/pokemon subreddit in the last twelve months, followed by Animal Crossing with 852,000 new members – an increase of 120%. It’s unsurprising to see such a high number of sign ups for Animal Crossing, with it dominating much of the pop culture sector last year, and with Pokémon continuing to expand the franchise throughout TV, Film and Gaming, it’s no surprise they’re dominating too.
Launched on the 18th November 2011 by Swedish game publisher Mojang, Minecraft has now amassed 126 millions active players worldwide and sold more than 200 millions copies worldwide, making it one of the largest and most loved gaming titles of all time*.
Looking more deeply at the subreddit registration and Google Trend search volume, we discovered that Manga series ‘Attack On Titan’ experienced the biggest increase in growth out of all the fandoms over the past year – a 217% increase in subreddit users and a 223% increase in Google searches.
Due to it only being released in December 2020, Cyberpunk saw the second biggest increase in subreddit registrations and Google Trends searches. The game’s subreddit received 590,535 new members in the previous 12 months, an increase of 207%, while its Google Search data had increased by a third.
