In saying the most popular sport in the world I am talking about what people participate in the sport. There have been a strong argument that while Football/Soccer is the most watched sport in areas where it is played the vast majority o players are under 14 and due to economical factors the adult populations do not have time for leisure.
Also people don't understand how global basketball has become the last 20 years (I really think it is tanks to the Dream Team of 1992). Right now in the U.K. for under 25 year olds Basketball has replaced football as the most played sport there. Also for places with bad weather it is easy to play basketball inside.
There is no way 11% of the world population plays basketball.
I tried to find the original source so I could check the methodology and couldn't - but i'd guess that a telephone survey of 35,000 people being extrapolated out to the entire world population leads to bad results
The second part of that statement - that Basketball is the most popular sport in Australia - is verifiably false as the governments own data shows it at only the 7th most popular[0]
I don't think you understand how popular soccer has always been, everywhere.
The last FIFA census estimated that there are 265 million people playing in organized games with 5 million referees. We're not even talking about pickup games - which is what the research in your link is about (I'll ignore the quality of research methodology for now) - we're talking about organized leagues. The number of people who play pickup soccer games is much, much higher.
In saying the most popular sport in the world I am talking about what people participate in the sport. There have been a strong argument that while Football/Soccer is the most watched sport in areas where it is played the vast majority o players are under 14 and due to economical factors the adult populations do not have time for leisure.
Also people don't understand how global basketball has become the last 20 years (I really think it is tanks to the Dream Team of 1992). Right now in the U.K. for under 25 year olds Basketball has replaced football as the most played sport there. Also for places with bad weather it is easy to play basketball inside.