About
The FanSided 250 (previously called the Fandom 250) is our annual celebration of fandom. Our list has evolved into a ranking of the “hottest” 250 fandoms of the year, whereas previous years’ lists have focused on identifying and ranking the “best” fan bases. We’re looking at the things that made you a fan this year: the people, teams, and things that gave us moments to root for.
Our editors met multiple times over several months to nominate, study, and vote on what they believe to be the world’s most popular fandoms across sports and entertainment. Using publicly available information, voting data from FanSided’s millions of readers, and our editorial team’s expertise, we whittled down a list of over 500 nominated fandoms to the top 250. Each year we hope to create a ranking of fandoms that is unique, sparks debate, and reflects what the world was passionate about that year.
Thank you for visiting the FanSided 250 and for celebrating your passion with us. We do this for you.
Methodology
How do you evaluate fandom? You can try to quantify it. On each fandom’s FanSided 250 card, you’ll see three key statistics: the Fan Vote, Search Score, and Social Follows.
But numbers alone can’t measure fandom, and so our editorial team dove deep into the presence and identity of each of the nominated fandoms. Each year, we continue to make tweaks to the methodology to make our system more accurate.
This year, we’ve adjusted our values as well, placing a greater emphasis on buzz — how hot a fandom was in 2020 — than ever before. Our team took into account our longstanding values of magnitude (a fanbase’s size and scope), legacy (longevity and loyalty of the fanbase) and passion, but buzz was most important. If the fans of a player, team or entertainer have buzz, we see them all over social media, they are inescapable, they dominate every physical and virtual water cooler conversation.
After much deliberation and healthy debate, 250 fanbases were ranked and ordered to be the list you see on the FanSided 250 today.