Singapore, the 6th best sports city in the world!

The website SportBusiness.com recently released its list of 25 Ultimate Sports Cities and Singapore was number 6 on the list, ahead of every single city in North America except New York, which came in 4th. In fact, no other city from the USA even made the list. So according to them, I now live in a city that is better for sports than Los Angeles, Chicago, Denver, Philadelphia, etc. Yeah, right.

To be fair, the survey focuses on large sporting events like the Olympics (hence London taking over the top spot and Vancouver taking 12th) rather than the team sports that are far more prevalent in the States and provide more opportunities to watch games. Since Singapore hosts the F1 every year in September and also held the Youth Olympics in 2010 among other low-level events, it received a lot of points, making it the number one sports city in Asia despite having just a single soccer league locally.

Despite the rather biased nature of this list, it does provide ideas for international sports travel. Cities like Copenhagen (#8) or Budapest (#18) make for intriguing destinations in Europe, while Melbourne (#2) and Sydney (#3) are excellent spots if you want to make the trip Down Under. Americans are very insular when it comes to sports, generally ignoring anything that isn't hyped up by ESPN, so studying what is available in these cities is a good way to increase one's overall knowledge of the international sports scene. If there's one thing I've learned in my 15 years living overseas, it is that all sports can be fascinating once you understand the game. Hopefully articles such as this will inspire some to seek out new sporting destinations outside their comfort zone.

Best,

Sean