ESPN has released the World Fame 100 rankings. The rankings illuminate the most famous athletes to date. For this edition, three of the UFC’s biggest mixed martial artists have made the list.
ESPN’s system for determining the rankings is as follows:
“The data for each athlete in the pool was then fed into a formula created by ESPN director of sports analytics Ben Alamar that weighs athletes’ endorsements, their following on the social media Big Three (Facebook, Twitter and Instagram) and Google search popularity, producing a comparative ranking system. The analysis includes five categories: endorsement money, Twitter followers, Instagram followers, Facebook followers and Google Trends score. For special situations (esports and China) we used two additional categories: other social media — for when the athlete was more relevant on a platform outside the Big Three (Twitch, for example, although no gamers made the top 100) — and, in China’s case, Baidu search score, because Google is blocked there.”
For this edition of the World Fame 100 rankings, former UFC bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey made it to #16, UFC lightweight champion Conor “Notorious” McGregor landed a spot at #25. Former UFC middleweight champion Anderson “The Spider” Silva is now ranked at #39.
