Hot Dog! The Most Popular Stadium Foods

If you’ve ever bought an overpriced hot dog at a game and thought, “Why do I do this to myself?”, good news: you’re not the only one, and we have the data to back it up. The Action Network analyzed over 100,000 stadium reviews across nearly 100 arenas to find the most talked about stadium foods.

What stood out from the numbers was not surprising: fans still lean hard on the classics, but some leagues and specific venues have their own clear food identities. Let’s take a lap around America’s stadium menus.

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Key Takeaways

• Hot dogs make up 18.21% of all food mentions across all sports.
• Hot dogs make up 24.89% of MLB food mentions, the strongest single-item identity of any league. Baseball = hot dogs, unmistakably.
• Fries (10.87%) come in second and nachos (10.32%) in third.
• Wings win the NBA (16.06%) but are less popular in other leagues.
• Plant-based foods are rarely mentioned.
• Ranch is the most mentioned condiment, beating out ketchup and mustard combined.
• Ice cream is the most popular dessert.
• Coke and coffee are roughly equal in popularity.

Most Popular Stadium Foods

Below are the 10 most commonly mentioned foods for all sports leagues combined.

• Hot dog. The classic is the number one stadium food in America, pulling in 18% of all food mentions, and no other item really challenges it. That lead only grows when you include the “extended hot dog family” like chili dogs, corn dogs, and bratwurst.
• Fries, nachos, and pizza are bunched together in the 9% to 10% range. It's the core trio you can count on seeing at pretty much any stadium. Popcorn lands at 8.94%, which is higher than you might guess, and shows up across every league, not just in ballparks.
• Wings are in the middle of the board at 7.17%. Fans clearly like them, especially indoors, but they're not the top-line item everywhere you go. Pretzels come in just over 6.42%, which tracks with what they are in the stadium ecosystem: a steady, traditional snack that never really goes away.

NFL Most Popular Stadium Foods

• Hot dogs run NFL stadium food, making up 18.18% of all mentions and standing as the clear number one.
• Fries and nachos are right behind, each making up about 11% of what fans talk about.
• Wings sit at 6.12%, which is pretty modest for an item that feels mandatory for Super Bowl parties at home. Inside the stadium, they are more of a solid option than a flagship food.

Overall, the NFL food profile still looks like a tailgate menu inside the gates: classic, heavier staples, with hot dogs, fries, and nachos at the top.

MLB Most Popular Stadium Foods

• Hot dogs are the undisputed king of baseball, showing up in 24.89% of all food mentions, more than the next two items combined. No other league has a single food that defines it this strongly. Baseball equals hot dogs, full stop.
• Pretzels hold their ground as a classic ballpark move with just over 5% of mentions.

Wings are nowhere in the top 10, which fits how traditional MLB food culture still is compared to other leagues.

NBA Most Popular Stadium Foods

• Wings own the NBA arena menu, with 16% of all food mentions, the strongest wings showing in any league.
• Pizza at 11.99% and hot dogs at 11.14% are almost neck and neck for the next two spots.

Compared to other leagues, NBA crowds lean hardest into shareable foods. Wings, fries, and pizza all overperform versus what you see in ballparks or outdoor football stadiums.

Most Popular Condiments

Ranch at 61.50% is not just ahead, it's running away, getting mentioned more than ketchup and mustard combined. But what is everyone using the ranch for? That part is murkier. Wings rule in the NBA, but ranch doesn't track one to one with that, which suggests fans are dipping a lot more than chicken in it. Hopefully not hot dogs, but you never know.

Ketchup at 16.9% still holds a clear second, which makes sense for a classic hot dog topping. Mustard at 15.5% is close behind, showing a pretty even split between the two. Lastly, relish is way back at 3.3%, which tells you it's nowhere close to being a standard choice across stadiums.

Sports Fans Still Favor Traditional Stadium Foods

All this data basically comes down to one question. Do you want your carbs in tube form, triangle form, strip form, or chip form? Hard to argue with that. Stadiums are adding more local spots and high-concept menu items, but fans still show up craving the old standbys. Take Caesars Superdome for example; you can get beignets and get that New Orleans feel while you watch the Saints.

The reviews say something else, though, as fans are still leaning toward other options once they're in their seats. You see the same pattern around the country: the wild new items get the photos and the retweets, while the steady money and the long lines go to hot dogs, fries, nachos, pizza, and popcorn. The classics are still doing most of the heavy lifting.

Methodology

Here's how the numbers came together. Action Network analyzed 143,214 stadium reviews across nearly 100 arenas and ballparks in the United States. The dataset tracked how often specific foods were mentioned in those reviews.

By adding up those mentions across every stadium, we built a national leaderboard of stadium foods.

Because a lot of venues are shared across leagues, for example a stadium that hosts both an NFL and an MLS team, each stadium was counted once for every league that plays there.

Total food mentions for a group were calculated by summing all food item counts within that group. National rankings used food mentions from every stadium in the dataset. League specific rankings were recalculated using only the stadiums tied to that league.

Those rankings are what show hot dogs, fries, and nachos on top nationally, and where different leagues or individual stadiums break from the pack.

You can see the full dataset here.