Just how many people don’t watch sports?

As hard as it is to believe at times, there are people who don’t watch sports. The percentages as to how many people that is though might come as a surprise.

Leave it to an ESPN site to provide these statistics. The fine people at FiveThirtyEight and ESPN research have crunched the numbers and found that 7 percent of all men between the third quarter of 2013 through the third quarter of this year didn’t care to watch sports. That breaks down to 1 in every 14 men. They don’t watch casually, don’t enter any fantasy leagues, don’t provide a bracket to NCAA Tournament office pools, don’t visit sports sites, they just don’t pay attention to sports at all. In fact, that number is the same for women, 7 percent of all females during that same time period didn’t watch sports either.

There’s even an age breakdown for the non-sports watchers. There are more non-sports watchers among the 18-34 demographic, in fact almost 15% among males, 5% among 35-54 and even less over age 55.

So, a large majority of men and women are at least casual sports watchers, but there is a block of men who won’t get up early to watch Australian Open tennis, the English Premier League, Olympics or sit down to watch the NFL on a Sunday afternoon. While they are a silent minority, they seem to be a proud minority.

Maybe you know a person like this or perhaps you know of someone who doesn’t watch sports. Just know that he or she makes up 7% of the population who won’t know what you’re referencing if you discuss this weekend’s sports action.