We knew there were a lot of them, but not how many. Now a My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fan has taken a census of brony fandom for the last two years, and has done a survey estimating that 7 to 12.4 million people are bronies. The survey estimating how many people are bronies asked a random sample of Internet users, "How strongly would you identify yourself as a "brony," a fan of the television show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic?" A scale from 1 (Not at All) to 5 (Extremely Strongly) was provided, and based on the percentage of respondents who answered 4 or five, the estimate of 7 to 12.4 million bronies was derived.The brony census, titled State of the Herd (My Little Pony: Statistics Are Magic) provides a wealth of data on the characteristics of My Little Pony fandom. The census was filled out by over 21,000 respondents, so it stands a good chance of being representative of hard core fans.
Here are some key take-aways from the 50+ page report:
- Gender: 84% male
- Age: Mean age is 20.19 years, with 79% of bronies between 15 and 25, and 95% between 10 and 30.
- Marital Status: 96% have never been married (probably connected to age).
- Serious Relationship: 76% have never been in a serious relationship
- Country: 63% are American, with Canada, the UK, and Australia the next three countries.
- Student Status: 64% are full time students, 6% are part time students.
- Furry Status: 17% self-identify as furries, a pretty big number.
- Sexual Orientation: 17.7% of bronies self-identified as LGBT, vs. 6.4% in the general population.
- And the money question: Over 50% have purchased Hasbro toys in the last year, over 40% have purchased MLP clothing, over 20% have purchased calendars, posters, or books, over 10% have purchased MLP DVDs, and around 10% have purchased officially licensed games.
