A few weeks back, I posted a survey on reddit’s r/nfl and r/samplesize examining football fan’s perceptions of bias in ESPN’s reporting. I’m not sure what exactly led me to post this survey, but it was likely because I am a Carolina Panthers fan (full disclosure), and I was surprised that the Dallas Cowboys seemed to be getting a lot of support from Vegas and from sportscasters. It is worth mentioning, that despite the fact that this survey focused on ESPN, there was a lot of support for Carolina from sportscasters as well as FiveThirtyEight’s prediction algorithm, so I wasn’t singling ESPN out because I thought they were particularly biased. I chose them because they are the most visible sports network.



In terms of defining “bias”, I mostly leave this to the interpretation of the participant. However, it seems fair to think of bias as a preference for or against a particular team that goes beyond what would be considered reasonable. Therefore, bias is not simply how much airtime a particular team gets, but whether the content is positive or negative. It is also worth emphasizing that this is not meant to measure actual bias, but rather, individuals perceptions of bias.

Before examining football fans’ perceptions of bias, I asked participants to select their favorite team. As you can see in the figure below, the majority of participants ended up being New England Patriots fans. The distribution of favorites in this sample did not match with other polls measuring popularity of teams, which generally find that the Cowboys continue to have the most fans. However, the distribution found in this sample may be more of a reflection of how these teams are doing at this point in the season - as evidenced by the fact that the Carolina Panthers are overrepresented in this sample and the Dallas Cowboys are underrepresented. Alternatively, it may simply reflect the make-up of the reddit pages from which I collected responses - it is likely that younger fans are more likely to be aware of reddit, and it could be that younger fans tend to prefer different teams.

In terms of whether fans though that ESPN was biased against their favorite team, roughly 67% of fans believed that it was. As you can see in the figure below, fans of the Redskins, Rams, and Patriots were most likely to say yes, with fans of the Broncos, Colts, Giants, Steelers, and Titans were most likely to say no.

It is also worth looking at the raw numbers in terms of agreement (to be completely open about how many responses are represented by the proportions above). Therefore, in the figure below, we have the raw numbers of yes and no responses to the question of whether ESPN is biased against one’s favorite team.

Given that it is possible that yes responses reflected a belief that ESPN is biased positively toward their favorite team, the next question examined the direction of bias (-3 Very Biased Against to 3 Very Biased For). As shown below, most fans believed that ESPN is negatively biased towards their favorite team, with an average rating of -1.15. The fans who thought ESPN is most biased against their favorite were Patriots fans (Average Rating = -2.36). The only fans who believed that ESPN is biased in favor of their team were Packers fans*.

Finally, we can get to perceptions of which teams ESPN is most biased in favor of and against. The Patriots came out on top for most biased in favor with the Packers and Cowboys coming in second and third. The figure below displays the number of fans picking each team whereas the colors represent the favorite teams of those fans. So looking at the figure below, the majority of individuals who believed ESPN is most biased in favor of the Broncos were Patriots fans. Overall, the Patriots were thought to be most favored by ESPN, and Seahawks fans were most likely to choose the Pats. Another result worth noting is that Panthers fans did make up the bulk of fans who thought the Cowboys were most favored (most likely because that is who they were playing the week of this survey).

The top team for which team ESPN was perceived to be the most biased against was also the Patriots. Unsurprisingly, it should come Pats fans made up the vast majority of fans who believed that ESPN was biased against the Patriots. Next to the Patriots, the Browns were given the most votes, followed by the Panthers and the Jaguars. Unlike the Pats, votes for the Browns, Panthers, and Jags came largely from fans of other teams (though even without Pats fans, they would have ranked high on this question).

Overall, this survey has revealed a few findings. First, it has largely confirmed what everybody already knew, which is that we are likely to perceive the media as biased negatively towards our favorite team (though Packers and Giants fans proved to be exceptions). We also learned that the Patriots continue to be a divisive team, with the Pats simultaneously being considered to be the team that ESPN is most biased in favor of and against. It is also worth noting that when fans were asked about which teams ESPN is most biased against, with the exception of most Patriots fans, this survey found that many fans do not simply choose their favorite. There were only 9 Browns fans in the sample, yet the Browns received the second most votes in terms of which team ESPN is most biased against, so it is safe to say that Cleveland fans can at least take solace in the fact that fans of other teams feel your pain.

*It is worth noting that one particularly excitable Packers fan did vote 103 times, picking the Packers as the team that ESPN is most biased against, and the Vikings as the team that ESPN is most biased in favor of. For this post, I removed all but one of these votes.