Quick answer: Sixty sports trivia questions with answers, in six rounds of ten: football, the Olympics, tennis, basketball, American sports and a mixed bag of golf, F1, cricket, rugby, boxing and darts. The rounds run from easy to properly hard, and every answer comes with one extra fact for the host to read out.
Sport is the round every pub quiz has and every team argues about. One table cheers when it is announced, another groans, and both are wrong about how they will do. The trick is a round that rewards fans without shutting everyone else out.
These sixty are built for that. Each round of ten mixes a few questions almost anyone can get, a few that need a fan, and one or two for the person who has been waiting all night for the sport round. Read them out as they are, or pull your favourite ten into a single mixed round. Every answer has been checked, and we left out anything that changes every season, so the sheet will not go out of date by next week.
How to use these: one sport round per night is plenty, because sport divides a room faster than any other category. If you only need ten questions, take two from each of the first five rounds. Read each question twice, mark answers after the round, and accept Football or Soccer for round one without debate.
Round one: football (soccer)
1. Which country hosted and won the first FIFA World Cup in 1930?
Uruguay. The hosts beat Argentina 4-2 in the final in Montevideo.
2. In which year did England win its only men's World Cup?
1966, beating West Germany 4-2 after extra time at Wembley. Geoff Hurst scored three, and nobody else managed a hat-trick in a men's World Cup final until Kylian Mbappé in 2022.
3. Which player scored the Hand of God goal?
Diego Maradona, for Argentina against England in the 1986 World Cup quarter-final. Four minutes later he dribbled past half the England team for the goal later voted the Goal of the Century.
4. How many World Cups did Pelé win as a player?
Three: 1958, 1962 and 1970. He is still the only player to win three, and he was 17 at the first one.
5. At which World Cup were yellow and red cards first used?
Mexico 1970. The English referee Ken Aston came up with the idea while sitting at a set of traffic lights, so the colours would mean the same thing in every language.
6. How far is the penalty spot from the goal line?
Twelve yards, or 11 metres. The distance has not changed since the penalty kick was introduced in 1891.
7. Which club plays its home games at the Camp Nou?
FC Barcelona, who have played there since 1957. It is the largest football stadium in Europe by seating capacity.
8. Which country won the first FIFA Women's World Cup in 1991?
The United States, who beat Norway 2-1 in the final in China. Matches at that first tournament lasted 80 minutes instead of 90.
9. Which club has won the European Cup, now the Champions League, more times than any other?
Real Madrid, by a wide margin: more than twice as many titles as AC Milan in second place. They also won the first five editions in a row, from 1956 to 1960.
10. Who won the first Ballon d'Or in 1956?
Stanley Matthews of Blackpool and England, at the age of 41. He kept playing top-flight football until five days after his 50th birthday.
Round two: the Olympics
11. Which city hosted the first modern Olympic Games in 1896?
Athens. All 241 competitors were men. Women first competed four years later, in Paris.
12. How many rings are on the Olympic flag?
Five, designed by Pierre de Coubertin in 1913. Coubertin said the six colours, counting the white background, could reproduce the flag of every country.
13. Which athlete has won the most Olympic medals of all time?
Michael Phelps, with 28, including 23 golds. Eight of those golds came at a single Games, Beijing 2008.
14. Which city hosted the 2024 Summer Olympics?
Paris, for the third time after 1900 and 1924. The opening ceremony was held on the Seine, the first one ever staged outside a stadium.
15. At which Olympics did Jesse Owens win four gold medals?
Berlin 1936: the 100 metres, 200 metres, long jump and 4 x 100 metres relay.
16. Who scored the first perfect 10 in Olympic gymnastics?
Nadia Comăneci of Romania, aged 14, on the uneven bars at Montreal 1976. The scoreboard could only show three digits, so it read 1.00.
17. What does the Olympic motto Citius, Altius, Fortius mean?
Faster, Higher, Stronger. In 2021 the IOC added a fourth word, Communiter, meaning together.
18. Which country hosted the first Winter Olympics in 1924?
France, in Chamonix. At the time it was called International Winter Sports Week and only became the first Winter Olympics after the fact, in 1926.
19. Why is a marathon 26.2 miles long?
Because of the 1908 London Olympics, where the course ran 26 miles from Windsor Castle to the White City Stadium plus a lap of the track. The 42.195 km distance was made the official standard in 1921.
20. In which event did Bob Beamon set a famous world record at Mexico City in 1968?
The long jump, with 8.90 metres. It beat the old record by 55 centimetres, stood as the world record for almost 23 years, and is still the Olympic record.
Round three: tennis
21. Which Grand Slam tournament is played on grass?
Wimbledon. The Australian Open and US Open are on hard courts.
22. Which Grand Slam tournament is played on clay?
The French Open, at Roland Garros in Paris.
23. What is the score called when both players reach 40?
Deuce. From there a player has to win two points in a row to take the game.
24. What colour must players wear at Wimbledon?
White. The rule goes back to the 19th century, and the dress code still says that off-white and cream do not count.
25. What do you call a legal serve that the receiver does not even touch?
An ace. It wins the point outright for the server.
26. In which year did the Open Era of tennis begin, letting professionals play the big tournaments?
1968. The first Grand Slam of the Open Era was the French Open that May.
27. Which man is the only player to win the calendar Grand Slam twice?
Rod Laver of Australia, in 1962 and again in 1969. Don Budge was the first man to do it at all, in 1938.
28. In 1988 Steffi Graf won all four majors and one more title. What was the fifth?
The Olympic gold medal in Seoul. Winning all four majors and Olympic gold in one calendar year is called the Golden Slam.
29. Who was 17 when he became the youngest men's singles champion at Wimbledon?
Boris Becker, in 1985. He was also the first unseeded player and the first German to win the title.
30. Who won the Battle of the Sexes match in 1973?
Billie Jean King, who beat Bobby Riggs 6-4, 6-3, 6-3 at the Houston Astrodome in front of more than 30,000 people.
Round four: basketball
31. Who invented basketball?
James Naismith, a Canadian-born teacher, in December 1891 at the YMCA training school in Springfield, Massachusetts.
32. What did the first basketball games use as baskets?
Peach baskets, fixed to the balcony rail of the gym about ten feet off the floor.
33. How high is a regulation basketball rim?
Ten feet, or 3.05 metres. That is roughly the height of the balcony rail where Naismith hung the first peach baskets.
34. How many players does each team have on the court at once?
Five.
35. How long is the shot clock in the NBA?
24 seconds. The idea came from Syracuse in 1954: about 120 shots in a 48-minute game, so 2,880 seconds divided by 120.
36. With which team did Michael Jordan win all six of his NBA championships?
The Chicago Bulls, in two three-peats: 1991 to 1993 and 1996 to 1998. He was named Finals MVP all six times.
37. Who scored 100 points in a single NBA game?
Wilt Chamberlain, for the Philadelphia Warriors against the New York Knicks on 2 March 1962. The game was not televised.
38. The Los Angeles Lakers are named after the nickname of which state?
Minnesota, the Land of 10,000 Lakes. The team played in Minneapolis before moving to Los Angeles in 1960.
39. In which season did the NBA introduce the three-point line?
1979-80. Chris Ford of the Boston Celtics made the first one on 12 October 1979.
40. At which Olympics did the original Dream Team play?
Barcelona 1992, the first Olympics open to NBA players. They won their games by an average of almost 44 points.
Round five: American sports (NFL, MLB, NHL)
41. How many points is a field goal worth in American football?
Three. A touchdown is worth six.
42. Which team won the first Super Bowl in January 1967?
The Green Bay Packers, who beat the Kansas City Chiefs 35-10. Officially it was called the AFL-NFL World Championship Game.
43. Which NFL team is the only one to finish a whole season unbeaten, including the Super Bowl?
The 1972 Miami Dolphins, who went 17-0. The 2007 New England Patriots won every regular season game and then lost the Super Bowl.
44. How many innings are in a regulation Major League Baseball game?
Nine.
45. How far apart are the bases on a baseball diamond?
Ninety feet. The distance was first written into the rules in 1857 and has not moved since.
46. Whose shirt number, 42, has been retired by every Major League Baseball team?
Jackie Robinson's. He broke baseball's colour line with the Brooklyn Dodgers on 15 April 1947, and on that date every year every player in the majors wears 42.
47. Which team sold Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees?
The Boston Red Sox, in a deal completed in January 1920. They did not win the World Series again until 2004.
48. Which trophy goes to the winner of the NHL playoffs?
The Stanley Cup, first awarded in 1893 and named after Lord Stanley of Preston, then Governor General of Canada. The winning players' names are engraved on it.
49. Which number did Wayne Gretzky wear, now retired across the whole NHL?
99. The league retired it for every team in 2000.
50. In the 1980 Miracle on Ice, which team did the United States beat?
The Soviet Union, 4-3, at the Lake Placid Winter Olympics. The gold medal itself came two days later, with a win over Finland.
Round six: mixed bag
51. Which golf tournament gives its winner a green jacket?
The Masters, at Augusta National in Georgia. The champion may take the jacket home for one year, after which it stays at the club.
52. In golf, what is a score of one under par on a hole called?
A birdie. Two under is an eagle and three under is an albatross.
53. How many Formula One world titles did Michael Schumacher win?
Seven: two with Benetton in 1994 and 1995, then five in a row with Ferrari from 2000 to 2004.
54. How many legal balls make up an over in cricket?
Six. Australia bowled eight-ball overs from the 1930s until the late 1970s.
55. Which two countries play for the Ashes in cricket?
England and Australia. The name comes from a mock obituary for English cricket printed in 1882, after Australia won at the Oval.
56. How many points is a try worth in rugby union?
Five. In rugby league it is worth four.
57. What was Muhammad Ali's name at birth?
Cassius Clay, in full Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. He won Olympic gold in Rome in 1960 under that name and changed it in 1964.
58. What colour jersey does the overall leader of the Tour de France wear?
Yellow, since 1919, to match the paper of L'Auto, the newspaper that organised the race.
59. What is the highest score possible with three darts?
180, three darts in the treble 20.
60. The sport of rugby is named after what?
Rugby School, in the town of Rugby in Warwickshire, England. The story of a pupil called William Webb Ellis picking up the ball and running with it is popular but almost certainly a legend.
Tips for hosting a sports round
Decide on spellings and alternatives before you start. Accept Comaneci without the accent, Soccer for Football and the French Open for Roland Garros. Arguments about spelling eat more time than arguments about facts.
Put the sports round in the middle. Open with something everyone can do, like an easy trivia round, then bring sport in as round three or four, when teams are settled and the scores are still close.
Avoid this season. Current champions, transfer news and running records go stale fast, and someone at the table will always have checked their phone more recently than you. Historic finals, rules and numbers stay true.
Keep a tie-breaker ready. A number question works best, where the closest answer wins. For example: how many seconds is the NBA shot clock? The answer is 24. College basketball in the US uses 30, which makes it a nice trap.
Not sure how to put a whole night together? Pub quiz rounds explained walks through the usual round types and the order that works.
More quiz questions
If you would rather play than host, try the online pub quiz with 500 questions across ten rounds. For more rounds to read aloud, the trivia questions by category page has a short sport section plus nine other subjects, and general knowledge questions and answers covers the classic mixed round. If the night needs a gentler start, 50 easy trivia questions is the warm-up, and hard trivia questions is the other end of the scale.
And if one round always costs your team points, cricket or the Olympics or whatever it is, NerdSip turns any subject into five-minute courses with a quick question at the end of each lesson, which is a painless way to stop dreading it.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are good sports trivia questions for a pub quiz?
Questions about history, rules and famous moments, because they do not change. Which country hosted the first World Cup? Uruguay, in 1930, and they won it too. Who scored 100 points in an NBA game? Wilt Chamberlain, in 1962. Avoid current champions and running records, which can be out of date by the time you read them out.
What are some easy sports trivia questions?
How many players does a basketball team have on court? Five. Which Grand Slam is played on grass? Wimbledon. What is the highest score with three darts? 180. How many rings are on the Olympic flag? Five. Questions like these give every team a few points before the harder ones arrive.
What are some hard sports trivia questions?
Who won the first Ballon d'Or in 1956? Stanley Matthews, at 41. Which man won the calendar Grand Slam twice? Rod Laver, in 1962 and 1969. The Lakers are named after which state? Minnesota, because the team started in Minneapolis.
How many sports questions should a quiz round have?
Ten is the standard. It takes about six to eight minutes to read out with time to write. Mix different sports in one round so the football fan does not answer everything alone, and keep sport to one round per night.
Why is a marathon 26.2 miles long?
Because of the 1908 London Olympics. The course ran 26 miles from Windsor Castle to the stadium, plus a lap of the track, which adds up to 42.195 kilometres. That distance became the official standard in 1921.
Every NerdSip course clears a four-layer fact-checking pipeline before it reaches the app: grounded in live sources, scored nightly, gated on failure, and reviewable by a person at one tap. Articles on this blog are drafted with AI assistance, then researched, verified, and edited by our team.
Editorial responsibility: ai51 UG (haftungsbeschränkt). Responsible editor named in the imprint.
📚 Keep Learning
- 50 Easy Trivia Questions and Answers (Everyone Should Get These)
- 50 Hard Trivia Questions That Stump Almost Everyone
- 150 General Knowledge Questions and Answers (With the Top 10 First)
- Every Pub Quiz Round, Explained (And How to Prepare for Each)
- 50 History Trivia Questions and Answers
- How to Get Better at Pub Quizzes (Without Reading More Trivia)
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