The World Series of Poker Main Event enjoys a unique relationship with professional sports.
Famous athletes including Paul Pierce, Roberto Luongo and most recently Brad Lidge have all taken a turn at the felt. It makes it feel like a quasi-sporting event.
Unlike other sports, however, players are allowed to wear whatever they want, which leads to a wide assortment of jerseys and sports paraphernalia in the gargantuan poker tournament.
After covering the $10,000 buy-in tournament for over a decade and seeing hundreds of different jerseys we got curious as to which ones were the most popular.
We decided to try to take note of every single jersey while reporting on the tournament this year.
This is not an exact science obviously.
Jersey information was ONLY gathered from the first three starting days of the 2016 Main Event. It was an informal assessment and there’s a good chance we missed a few as players might have gone to the bathroom or busted before we got to them.
We didn’t include team t-shirts or warm-up jackets. There were also a few jerseys that didn’t belong to any major leagues (such as novelty poker jerseys) and we opted to not include those ones.
The end result?
Football on top, although baseball was close behind. Hockey and basketball tied for third.
It wasn’t a huge surprise that football was the most popular jersey in field as it’s the most popular sport in America. We were a little more surprised by just how close baseball came to dethroning the NFL.
Here’s a look at the numbers we gathered from the 6,737 players in the WSOP :
Breakdown by Sport
Football jerseys: 19
Baseball jerseys: 18
Hockey jerseys: 6
Basketball jerseys: 6
Soccer jerseys: 3
Breakdown by Team
New York Yankees: 3
Chicago Blackhawks: 2
Philadelphia Eagles: 2
New York Mets: 2
Houston Astros: 2
Indianapolis Colts: 2
Denver Broncos: 2
Toronto Bluejays: 2
Cleveland Cavaliers: 2
San Francisco 49ers: 1
MLB All-Star: 1
Detroit Pistons: 1
LA Dodgers: 1
Arizona Cardinals: 1
New England Patriots: 1
St. Louis Blues: 1
Vancouver Canucks: 1
New York Jets: 1
Ohio State: 1
Tenesse Titans: 1
Detroit Lions: 1
San Diego Padres: 1
Chicago Bears: 1
Kansas City Royals: 1
Sunderland FC: 1
University of Cincinnati: 1
Seattle Seahawks: 1
Seattle Mariners: 1
Montreal Expos: 1
Villanova University: 1
Minnesota Vikings: 1
Oakland Raiders: 1
Barcelona FC: 1
Baltimore Orioles: 1
Pittsburgh Pirates: 1
Edmonton Oilers: 1
Hungary Soccer: 1
Dallas Cowboys: 1
Cincinnati Reds: 1
Russia Hockey: 1
Green Bay Packers: 1
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