The Most and Least Loyal NFL Fanbases Revealed

The NFL regular season is just about to start back up again, and fans are ready to watch their team play across the upcoming weeks. And while some may be confident in their team, others will be feeling the nerves after years of disappointment and heartache – but who has stayed loyal through all of the challenges?

A new study by Casino Guru USA surveyed NFL fans to assess their resilience and commitment to their teams, from how many games they attend per season to whether they’ve ever stopped supporting them when times were tough. The results were compared to each team’s performance for the last 25 years, creating true loyalty scores out of 100 and determining which fanbases are the most devoted.

The Cleveland Browns have the most loyal fanbase, scoring 100/100, with 84% of fans claiming they’ve never stopped supporting them despite facing 22 losing seasons since 2000. Fans of the Indianapolis Colts are the least loyal with a score of 10/100 – 1 in 4 admitted they started supporting them because they were performing well, and 2 in 3 said they don’t ever attend their games.

Roughly 1 in 7 NFL fans admitted they’d be likely to support a different team if their own had a bad season – the Houston Texans had the highest proportion of fans who’d ditch at 32%, while the New York Giants had the most fans who’d stay supporting at 96%. One-fifth of fans (20%) would miss out on a family member’s wedding to watch their team in the Super Bowl, with Jets fans the most eager at 42%. From tickets to gameday costs, the largest proportion of fans (39%) reported spending $100 or less per season – but Seattle Seahawks fans splurge the most, with 28% reporting a spend between $501-$1,000.

Fans of the New York Jets rank second with a score of 81/100. The Jets haven’t earned a title since 1968 and hold the record for the longest active playoff drought at 15 seasons – yet 42% of fans stated that they still watch 14-17 games in a season, even if they are performing poorly – and 3 in 4 claimed they’d keep backing them publicly. Washington Commanders fans also scored 81/100, sharing second place with the Jets. With 16 losing seasons since 2000, plus nine particularly poor seasons where they won five of their games or less, more than half (53%) of fans claimed that they’ve never stopped watching or left a game early when things weren’t looking good – and, unsurprisingly, 1 in 4 rated themselves a 10/10 when asked how much of a die-hard fan they think they are.

Fourth place goes to Tampa Bay Buccaneers fans, scoring 74/100. Fans have dealt with 14 losing seasons in 26 years, alongside a playoff drought of 12 years – and through the hardships, they stay loyal. Nearly three-quarters (72%) said they would be unlikely to support a new team if their favorite Bucs player moved there, and the fanbase had the highest proportion of people who have traveled more than 500 miles to attend one of their games (1 in 6). In the fifth spot are Arizona Cardinals fans, scoring 67/100. Throughout the team’s 16 losing seasons since 2000, fans still showed their support, even when things weren’t playing out how they’d hoped; average home game attendance stood at 63,100, which is a slight increase of 0.15% compared to the average during winning seasons of 63,004.

New England Patriots fans sit in second, scoring 22/100. While they share the record for the most Super Bowl wins with the Steelers, fans would give them up if things went south – in fact, the team has one of the largest drops in the league in average home attendance from winning seasons to losing seasons since 2000 (4.5%). In third place are fans of the Green Bay Packers, scoring 23/100. In the past 26 seasons, only one of those saw a win percentage of .3215 or lower – the fewest of any team – but it’s not enough for fans to stick around during tough times. Around 3 in 4 fans (74%) claimed that they never attend their games, and roughly 1 in 2 (43%) said they’ve left or stopped watching a game before it finished if it wasn’t going well.

Philadelphia Eagles fans rank fourth, scoring 28/100. Having earned two Super Bowl wins since 2000 and boasting a relatively short playoff drought that lasted just three seasons doesn’t appear to be enough for Eagles fans. Roughly 1 in 7 said that, if the Eagles performed poorly consistently over one season, they’d consider supporting a different team – and the top choice for fans was the Pittsburgh Steelers. Fans of the Houston Texans take the fifth spot, scoring 29/100 – but in contrast to the other teams, they’ve endured more heartache, with 11 losing seasons since their first regular-season game.