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LeBron James‘ name has been in the news a lot in 2026. That’s because while fans knew it was his last season with the Los Angeles Lakers, no one knew if it was his last year playing in the NBA or if he would decide to continue playing basketball and where he would end up.

Well, on July 24, the world found out that one of the game’s all-time greats was taking his talents to Philadelphia and joining the Sixers, leading to a 24-hour news cycle about that decison for days. And now James is the most Googled sports star in the U.S. for 2026, having been searched over 2.45 million times each month on average this year.

The data for 250 YouGov’s contemporary sports personalities rankings were inputted into Google’s Keyword Planner (via DataForSEO API) to establish average monthly searches on a national and state-wide level. YouGov popularity and fame scores were collected from YouGov’s contemporary sports personalities ratings API.

If you’re wondering who followed James as the second-most Googled American athlete on the list, that’s Cleveland Browns quarterback Shedeur Sanders, with a slightly lower rate of 2.4 million searches per month.

Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Aaron Rodgers is the third most Googled sports star and second most Googled quarterback. He was searched more than 1,942,900 times a month this year, with four states searching for Rodgers above any other sports personality. The states where Rodgers topped the list were Pennsylvania (165,000 monthly searches), Wisconsin (110,000), Montana, and West Virginia.

Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce ranks fourth with 1,561,700 average searches per month across America. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Kelce tops the rankings in Kansas (33,100 monthly searches) and Missouri (60,500).

And rounding out the top five, with 1,354,500 average monthly searches in the U.S., is WNBA star Caitlin Clark, who is also the highest searched female sports star on the list. Clark tops the rankings in Iowa (60,500 monthly searches) and South Dakota (5,400).

Speaking on the findings, Irena Ducic, Senior Content Editor at AskGamblers, said, “An individual can quickly become more popular than the team they come from, or even become the face of a sport as is the case with LeBron James. When this happens, the sports star is open to an enormous amount of opportunities, from brand deals, sponsorships, and exposure to other industries so that after they’ve retired from the sport that has made them a household name, they have opportunities in entertainment, gaming, presenting, and more.

“Shedeur Sanders, a player who only recently entered the NFL, sits within 48,000 monthly searches of LeBron James nationally. That is a striking finding about how rapidly a new athlete can build a cultural footprint in the social media era.

“This has been the case for pretty much every name in the top 10, with Travis Kelce and John Cena starring in movies, many of the stars having hit podcasts and so on. They are also faces of huge brands such as Coco Gauff’s partnership with the likes of New Balance and Rolex and Rory McIlroy partnering with Nike.”

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