Big Brother Data – Where Players Come From
As we prepare for Big Brother 20, I had some time on my hands and decided to go through the former seasons and compile a bunch of stats for you guys who like that sort of stuff. This is going to be a multi-part series that will hopefully give you all the data you didn’t know you wanted from the entire Big Brother series.
In the opening segment, I am targeting where players come from. I came to think of this because of the casting calls for Big Brother 20 and wondered if your geographic location increases your chances of being on the show.
Some raw data before my infographic:
- There have been 294 houseguests
- California is obviously a hot spot with 66 former houseguests from the state!
- This is obvious seeing as the show takes place in CA and it’s also the most populated states
- Other heavily populated states are also big draws for the show. Here are some of the top:
- CA – 66
- FL – 30
- TX – 29
- Illinois – 22
- New York – 20
- Pennsylvania – 9
- Penn and Ohio are the only states with more than 10 million people but only single-digit houseguests. Ohio has 4
- There are quite a few states that have never been represented in the house. Most are in the central part of the country with lower population, but New Hampshire and Missouri are fairly surprising to me.
- New Hampshire has a relatively small population but it geographically close to NYC and Boston – plus its neighbor Maine has had 3!
- Speaking of Maine, the three houseguests were all guys. One was openly gay, one openly bisexual, and one openly crazy (just a joke, Scott)
- The point is, if you come from a smaller state like Maine, you apparently need some sort of niche.
- Maine is also an example of smaller states getting decent representation inside the Big Brother house. Using census data from around 2012 or so, they’ve had 3 houseguests with only barely a million people living in their state! Compare that to Ohio which has had 4 players yet nearly 12 million people. Poor Cleveland.
- Nevada actually tops the list but it’s surprising because I just thought the population was much higher than what it is.
- With barely 3 million people, they’ve sent 8 people to the house and produced 2 winners! (Maggie BB6, and Rachel BB13)
- California has easily produced the most winners (5), but with 22.5% of the players in BB history being from CA, that isn’t surprising.
- In addition to California, New York, Florida, and Nevada are all states that have produced more than one winner
Data includes Big Brother: Over the Top and Celebrity Big Brother
This information is to the best of my knowledge
Repeat houseguests are counted as different people
I am going to update this as I gather more data, but here is the infographic I made. Feel free to share it!