Best Olympic Team Sports

85 ELO points separate Basketball from Soccer at the top of the Team Sports ranking, after 4638 duels.

Basketball dominates with 1407 ELO points and a 69% win rate over 399 duels, but the sharpest division lies further down. An 88-point chasm opens between Volleyball at rank 4 and Water Polo at rank 5, marking the clearest break in the ranking. Soccer trails the leader by 85 points despite winning 67% of its 392 duels, while Handball secures third place with 1308 ELO points across 448 duels. Volleyball holds fourth with 1298 ELO, just 10 points ahead of Handball but 88 clear of Water Polo. The bottom reveals a tight cluster: Field Hockey sits at rank 12 with 1047 ELO points, just 43 points behind Softball at rank 11 and 53 points behind Artistic Swimming at rank 10. These three disciplines struggle to convince voters in direct confrontations, suggesting a clear preference for the faster-paced sports at the top.

This ranking draws on 4638 duels judged by 169 players across 12 contenders, updated on 12 October 2026. The vote remains open: compare your two favorite Olympic team sports in a duel, and your choice will shift the ELO scores that shape this TopList. Each matchup counts, whether you back Basketball's lead or push Water Polo higher.

Updated on October 12, 2026

How this ranking is computed

Every duel won lifts a contender and every loss drops them, by an amount that depends on the opponent's strength: beating the leader is worth more than beating the last. It is an ELO, the same principle as in chess. Duels are not drawn at random — an adaptive entropy sort puts the least predictable match-ups first, which settles the ranking far faster than a full round robin. A worldwide ranking is only published past 30 completed plays. Known limit: a contender who has faced few opponents keeps an approximate score, and the bottom of the table moves more than the podium.

How our rankings are made →