Data KC: What’s KC’s biggest pro sports draw these days?

It’s about as surprising as Alcides Escobar’s swinging at the first pitch, but Kansas City Royals’ games topped the list of pro sporting events attended in a recent survey.

Scarborough Research surveyed nearly 2,000 adults ages 18 and older in Kansas City’s 33-county marketing region about events they had attended in the previous 12 months. Just under 46 percent said they had attended some professional sporting event, and 30.5 percent said they had been to a Royals game.

Winning — and the two straight World Series appearances that winning has earned — no doubt helped, as does having 81 home games each season.

The Chiefs were next, at 14.3 percent — impressive, really, given that NFL teams have only eight regular season home games, and the Chiefs have only four playoff appearances this century, all losses. The survey was conducted before this season started, so it would have covered last season, when the team finished 9-7.

Up and coming Sporting Kansas City soccer was next at 9.6 percent, followed by the T-Bones independent minor league baseball team at 7.5 percent. A third attraction in the growing western Wyandotte County area, NASCAR, was fifth at 4.8 percent.

At least half of those in the 33-county survey saying they had attended those professional events were from the two biggest counties in the marketing region, Johnson and Jackson.

Johnson had the biggest single-county share for the Royals (28.3 percent), Chiefs (30.9 percent), Sporting KC (40.2 percent) and T-Bones (41.5 percent). Jackson County was second for all of those and first for NASCAR at 32.3 percent of its total.

This story was originally published October 29, 2015 at 1:44 PM with the headline "Data KC: What’s KC’s biggest pro sports draw these days?."