They don’t call her the GOAT for no reason: Simone Biles is the most popular active athlete, according to the latest edition of Kantar’s Sports Monitor Athlete Reputation Tracker.
She’s followed by a handful of football and basketball stars including Patrick Mahomes, Caitlin Clark, Steph Curry, and Travis Kelce, both sports with athletes that dominate the rest of Kantar’s top 25 list.
Olympic gold: Biles’s ranking—a score of 99 out of 100—indicates that she has both high familiarity and likeability. To arrive at its rankings, Kantar asked about 1,300 sports fans how much they like and how familiar they are with a list of more than 100 athletes, rewarding athletes for familiarity and strong positivity and penalizing them for negativity, according to the report.
Since the survey was fielded between June 18 and July 3, just ahead of the Paris Olympics, it’s perhaps unsurprising that a few Olympians—all women—made the top 25. Biles was joined by Katie Ledecky at No. 11, with a score of 51, and Suni Lee at No. 21, with a score of 42.
America’s favorite sport(s): Beyond the Olympic cohort, NFL players occupy a significant share of spots, making up 40% of the top 25 active athletes list. Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Mahomes came in at No. 2, with a score of 87, and Chiefs tight end Kelce clocked in at No. 5, scoring 70. Mahomes took the top spot in last year’s report, when Kelce ranked 15.
- A roster of quarterbacks including Jalen Hurts, Josh Allen, Joe Burrow, Lamar Jackson, Brock Purdy, and C.J. Stroud also made the top 25 this year.
- San Francisco 49ers running back Christian McCaffrey and Miami Dolphins wide receiver Tyreek Hill placed in the top 25, too.
Additionally, basketball players and golfers had strong showings this year:
- Clark and Curry tied for third place, each scoring 75. Clark’s score skyrocketed in the past year, bumping her up from No. 63 in the 2023 report.
- LeBron James and Kevin Durant placed at No. 8 and No. 9.
- Golfers Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Rory McIlroy, and Jordan Spieth are also in the top 25.
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Winning culture: While Clark and Kelce saw their star power rise, some athletes’ rankings decreased fairly significantly this year, including basketball players Nikola Jokić, Giannis Antetokounmpo, and Joel Embiid, as well as Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott and retired soccer legend Megan Rapinoe.
Why? Put simply, US sports fans can be unforgiving, according to Ryan McConnell, EVP at Kantar.
“In the NFL and I think particularly in the NBA, if you don’t win a ring, if you don’t win it all, there’s almost this culture that you’re a failure,” McConnell said. “Especially talented athletes [like Prescott and Embiid] who are maybe reaching their late 20s, early 30s, who haven’t won the big prize yet, I think that those people tend to get a lot of criticism.”
Familiarity breeds contempt: Then there are “the polarizers,” as Kantar calls them, aka athletes with negative impressions above 20%, some of whom are retired, and others who made the top 25 active athletes list. The polarizers include Aaron Rodgers (26%), Brittney Griner (26%), Mike Tyson (23%), James (22%), Woods (22%), Tom Brady (21%), Conor McGregor (21%), and Rapinoe (21%).
That list could be a reflection of a US political culture that looks increasingly unfavorably upon athletes who become entangled in political conversations, whether intentionally or otherwise, McConnell said.
“A few years ago, we were in a different place culturally, a different place politically,” he said. “I think that there was more encouragement for athletes getting out there and using their platform to advocate for their beliefs, [but] one thing we’re seeing in our data is that maybe people who are a little bit more involved with these political causes…tend to have higher negative scores.”
McConnell pointed out that some of the most well-known athletes also tend to be the most disliked. Clark is one exception: Her familiarity jumped from 44% in 2023 to 80% in 2024, but there was no “corresponding increase in negative perceptions,” per the report.
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