Number of BBQ teams in North America?

National BBQ Rankings generally have about 5-6k listed.

I suspect there's about 500 that compete somewhat regularly each year.

Squeeze said:

maybe it would be easier to ask the rough number of teams per organization?

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Not really. Each association has teams that are also members of other associations. For example in MABA there are 157 teams. Out of those 125 + are also KCBS teams. Now that MABA has added NC to an area I expect more teams to be dual rolled with KCBS, MABA and NCBS,SCBS and GBA. I would believe also that some are NEBS teams. Would be a long process to figure out how many teams there are across the US of one name ONLY. One would have to glean each and every associations roster to delete duplicate names that show up in multiple membership rosters. So not a simple task by any means. As shown just in the Mid Atlantic region there are 7 different listings teams could be under or more.

I would guess that there is about 5-6k teams across the country, regardless of sanctioning. It stands to reason that over a 2 year period most any collection of people you would call a bbq team are going to have a top 10 call in something. This wouldnt include backyard. I really doubt that there is more than 10k total teams in the world including backyard.

Year to year probablyless than 1000 teams cooking more than 7-8 contests per year.

Another problem with attempting to ascertain the total number of teams in the USA is that there are MANY "non-sanctioned" competitions around with teams that don't compete in "sanctioned" comps.
Ten thousand teams is probably not too high an estimation. I can't see a way to ever truly find out how many teams compete each year without tons of research.

Many thanks to all for all of your great input.

This is a question that I have often wondered myself.

Maybe some of the PhB's should do further research in this area?

I realize that there are only 30 or so PhB's in the entire world.

However, I would suspect that a few of them will read this message.

8,482

Rub said:

8,482

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8,481
We "retired" but no one missed us. :redface:

I would guess in the neighborhood of 10K, with many that come and go over a year or two span.

No way to ever pin it down--just "bunches"!

TIM