Now, armed with an established ranking of the world’s 10 most popular sports, let’s go Google Trend data diving, and figure out who the five most popular athletes are in each sport. We will base our findings on the Google Trends’ metric, “average interest over time,” which averages the total number of searches performed via Google over a given time period of time (2014):

10. American Football — 400 Million Fans

Here are the top 5 NFL players in 2014

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Guiding me on who to include in my research, I went through both the “NFL Rank” and the “Fan Rank” list of the top 100 NFL players as published by nfl.com.

As for the rankings themselves, no surprises here. Peyton Manning had a record breaking year where he threw 55 TDs in the 2013–14 season, and he also advanced to Super Bowl XLVIII. Tom Brady is Tom Brady, and being married to Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bundchen probably boosts his overall popularity.

Richard Sherman and Russell Wilson broke through in 2014 — Sherman’s (in)famous postgame rant after the 2014 NFC Championship game against the San Francisco 49ers obviously skews things from a search perspective — and, after Manning, Aaron Rodgers is the league’s most recognizable television pitchman. He also happens to be the reigning MVP.

9. Basketball — 400 Million Fans

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Again, no surprises here. Kobe Bryant at No. 2 is a bit puzzling — one would have to assume that even in an injury-plagued down year, his rabid fans in Asia (Kobe is the most popular American athlete in China) are still avidly searching for the Black Mamba.

8. Golf — 450 Million Fans

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And here we have our first surprise. Sure, Tiger Woods is still ranked first on the list in terms of Google searches, but despite playing terribly last year, he still buried Rory McIlroy by 10(!) whole points in average interest over time. Globally, Tiger’s brand seems impervious to his on-course futility, and that remains a direct result of his undeniable star power.

7. Baseball — 500 Million Fans

*Alex Rodriguez missed the entire 2014 MLB season while serving a suspension for steroid use.

Baseball’s rankings make sense — Yankees legend Derek Jeter’s farewell tour predictably led the way. (He announced his retirement well before the 2014 MLB season started in April, which meant consistent coverage throughout the summer.) Alex Rodriguez, without playing a single game last season, was still the fourth-most searched ballplayer. Amazing.

6. Table Tennis — 850 Million Fans

Admittedly, I know nothing about this “sport,” so I consulted the list of the top-ranked players in the world, per allabouttabletennis.com, using the top-20 ranked men and women. (Admittedly, this method does not account for the sport’s possible version of Tiger Woods — immensely popular, but recently crappy, to the extent such player exists.)

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5. Volleyball — 900 Million Fans

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Much like table tennis, volleyball’s lack of well-known superstar athletes (or, at the very least, recognizable ones) hurts individual players in this exercise. Performing in front of a worldwide audience once every four years in the Olympics has its downside.

4. Tennis — 1 Billion Fans

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As we make our way to the top four, we begin to see the first traces of the world’s mega-super-duper-stars of their respective sports, and the overall global sports landscape. Unlike the major American professional sports, tennis tournaments are played all over the world. Roger Federer’s (22) and Rafael Nadal’s (18) average interest over time show just how large an audience there is for the sport and the best it has to offer.

Novak Djokovic? Sorry, great hair does not equal popularity, it seems.

3. Field Hockey — 2 Billion Fans

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TWO BILLION PEOPLE ARE FANS OF FIELD HOCKEY. Just let that marinate for a moment, okay? Seriously, it’s true. No lie. While the sport doesn’t have a large following in the U.S., it certainly has won one in Europe and Asia. Still, though, none of these names are likely to be recognized stateside.

2. Cricket — 2.5 Billion Fans

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Ahh, Cricket, the world’s second-most popular sport. Currently, the ICC Cricket World Cup 2015 is being held in Australia and New Zealand, and if you doubt this ranking, look no further than the intense rivalry match between India and Pakistan played on February 15. It garnered a worldwide audience of a billion people! It makes the Super Bowl look like a preseason game. Week 4 of the preseason, specifically.

This helps explain why India’s superstar cricketer, Virat Kohli, checks in with an average interest over time rating of 20.

1. Soccer — 3.5 Billion Fans

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Finally. The world’s most popular sport. As expected, soccer’s two current dominant superstars, Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, dominate the Google “airwaves,” but the Brazilian phenom, Neymar, is not far behind. And, while David Beckham is now retired and Ronaldinho is in the twilight of his legendary career, they still carry some clout.