London is Top Sport City for Fourth Consecutive Year

According to voters who participated into ‘2015 Sports City Poll’, London remains the world’s leading sports city, followed closely by Lausanne and Barcelona. Rounding out the top five finishers are Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo. And this year’s new additions to the top ten cities include Edmonton and Paris who replace Melbourne and Glasgow.

A full results of the ‘2015 Sports City Poll’ can be downloaded here.

Presented by Around the Rings in collaboration with TSE Consulting, the ‘2015 Sports City Poll’ ranks the top 50 sports cities from around the world on how much the public associates the city with sport.

Results are based on a public online vote coupled with an industry vote from sports experts – a group of 100 leaders drawn from international federations, National Olympic Committees, sports media and other influencers in the world of sport. Answers from sports experts are weighted more heavily than those from the general public.

"This poll is a great indicator and a unique tool to get public and sport experts opinions about the efforts made by cities" says Lars Haue-Pedersen, Managing Director, TSE Consulting.

"The results confirms a trend that can be drawn from the previous editions’ results. Bidding for or hosting major international sports events strongly increase the chance of cities to be associated with sport. However, we can also notice that this is not enough; cities must also have a good sport event strategy to ensure continued success."

With each edition of the poll, the three lowest ranked cities drop off the list, and the top three non-listed cities named by the survey respondents are added. New cities to be added to the 2016 edition of the Ranking, as chosen by voters, are Budapest, Gwangju (Korea) and San Francisco.

This annual ranking is built around a group of 50 cities selected through criteria such as staging recent and upcoming Olympics or other major multi-sport Games, hosting professional sports teams as well as organising major championships or world-class events such as tennis Grand Slams and Formula 1 races.

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