How many people play basketball worldwide?

How to get close to this number

Anchor on football and scale down. This site's companion question puts regular football players at around two hundred and fifty million; basketball is the clear second, and second place in global participation typically lands within a factor of two of first. That brackets the answer in the hundreds of millions.

Basketball has a structural advantage that explains its reach: it needs a hard surface, one hoop and one ball, and it works with any number of players from one upward. Sports that can be played alone, in a small space, in a city, spread further than sports that need a pitch, a team and grass — which is why this one is second and not tenth.

The origin in the explanation is worth keeping: it was invented in 1891 by a physical education teacher who needed an indoor game for a Massachusetts winter. Very few global sports have a known inventor and a known date; most evolved from folk games over centuries. This one was designed to a specification, and the specification is why it travels so well.