Overview
JavaScript is Sports's defining access barrier, well above the norm
| Value | |
|---|---|
| WAF | 98% |
| Antibot | 11% |
| CAPTCHA | 15% |
| JavaScript | 61% |
| Rate Limiting | 23% |
| TLS | 11% |
WAF is near-universal at 98%. JavaScript at 61% stands far above the sector's other barriers. Rate Limiting (23%) is the only other active layer with meaningful coverage.
Barrier Landscape
Sports combines modest technical barriers with aggressive AI-blocking policy
| Value | |
|---|---|
| WAF | 98% |
| Antibot | 11% |
| CAPTCHA | 15% |
| JavaScript | 61% |
| Rate Limiting | 23% |
| TLS | 11% |
| Has robots.txt | 89% |
| Blocks AI crawlers | 33% |
WAF leads at 98%. JavaScript (61%) and Rate Limiting (23%) are the main active layers. 33% of sites block AI crawlers via robots.txt — a policy emphasis that leads most surveyed sectors.
Two-barrier stacks are Sports's most common security posture
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| 0 barriers | 1% |
| 1 barrier | 20% |
| 2 barriers | 52% |
| 3 barriers | 17% |
| 4 barriers | 6% |
| 5 barriers | 4% |
| 6 barriers | 0% |
52% of Sports sites carry exactly 2 barriers. 27% stack three or more. 1% carry none — a low share of unprotected sites for this sector.
Most Sports sites are Simple to access
| Mean recommended tier | |
|---|---|
| All sites | 1.68 |
A mean recommended tier of 1.68 and a median of Simple place Sports around the middle of the sectors surveyed. 53% of sites are Simple to access; 14% require Moderate or above.
Simple is the dominant tier in Sports, but Easy accounts for a significant share
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| 1 - Simple | 53% |
| 2 - Easy | 33% |
| 3 - Moderate | 9% |
| 4 - Complex | 3% |
| 5 - Advanced | 2% |
Simple (53%) is the most common tier. Simple and Easy together account for 86% of sites, while 9% land at Moderate and 5% at Complex or Advanced.
robots.txt
Most Sports sites publish a robots.txt — coverage above the norm
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| Publish a valid robots.txt | 89% |
89% of Sports sites publish a valid robots.txt. The 11% without a file leave crawl policy undefined — a lower gap than the cross-sector average of around 24%.
Sports's robots.txt files show moderate engagement with named bot policy
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| 0 | 16% |
| 1 | 38% |
| 2–4 | 12% |
| 5–9 | 10% |
| 10–15 | 6% |
| 16+ | 18% |
A mean of 11.5 named agents reflects moderate bot-policy investment in Sports. 16% of sites name no agents; 18% name 16 or more. The median of 1 suggests a bimodal split.
AI crawlers draw the most robots.txt attention in Sports
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| AI crawlers | 34% |
| SEO / search indexing | 14% |
| SEO audit tools | 15% |
| Commercial scrapers | 17% |
| Social / content scrapers | 2% |
| Archive / research crawlers | 11% |
| Monitoring / uptime bots | 1% |
AI crawlers are mentioned by 34% of Sports sites — the leading bot category. Commercial scrapers follows at 17%. Figures are percentages of all 100 Sports sites including those with no robots.txt.
Uniform per-agent rules dominate Sports robots.txt files
| % of sites | |
|---|---|
| Uniform per-agent rules | 51% |
| Path-level mixed rules | 36% |
| Allow-only (no Disallow rules) | 1% |
| Mixed AI posture | 2% |
| Blanket Disallow: / | 0% |
Uniform per-agent rules lead at 51%, with path-level mixed rules at 36%. Mixed AI posture (2%) and blanket Disallow (0%) are minimal.
AI crawlers are among the most-targeted agents in Sports robots.txt
| Disallowed | Allowed (whitelisted) | |
|---|---|---|
| * | 79% | 33% |
| CCBot | 25% | — |
| GPTBot | 23% | — |
| Bytespider | 18% | 1% |
| FacebookBot | 18% | — |
| ChatGPT-User | 17% | — |
| anthropic-ai | 17% | — |
| ClaudeBot | 15% | — |
| Google-Extended | 13% | 1% |
| cohere-ai | 14% | — |
| Omgilibot | 13% | — |
| Meta-ExternalAgent | 13% | — |
| PerplexityBot | 13% | — |
| Diffbot | 12% | — |
| DuckAssistBot | 12% | — |
| YouBot | 12% | — |
| Timpibot | 11% | — |
| Googlebot | 5% | 6% |
| Meta-ExternalFetcher | 11% | — |
| Mediapartners-Google | 7% | 4% |
| Yandex | 7% | 3% |
| Omgili | 9% | — |
| OAI-SearchBot | 8% | 1% |
| Amazonbot | 8% | 1% |
| ImagesiftBot | 9% | — |
Values are percentages of all 100 Sports sites surveyed. The wildcard (*) leads at 79% Disallow. Among named agents, CCBot, GPTBot lead the Disallow list — reflecting direct targeting of AI training and indexing bots.
Industry Cohort
Sports leads the Retail & E-commerce cohort on AI-blocking policy
| WAF | Antibot | CAPTCHA | JavaScript | Rate Limit | TLS | robots.txt | Blocks AI | Tier | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apparel & Fashion | 91% | 21% | 15% | 49% | 54% | 32% | 69% | 4% | Tier 3 |
| Beauty & Cosmetics | 91% | 30% | 36% | 40% | 31% | 30% | 76% | 13% | Tier 2 |
| Computer & Video Games | 94% | 27% | 26% | 44% | 22% | 13% | 81% | 23% | Tier 1 |
| Computer Hardware | 93% | 30% | 20% | 42% | 33% | 15% | 73% | 13% | Tier 2 |
| Computers & Electronics | 86% | 13% | 17% | 34% | 18% | 15% | 73% | 9% | Tier 2 |
| Consumer Electronics | 92% | 27% | 27% | 46% | 29% | 20% | 83% | 9% | Tier 2 |
| Equipment & Supplies | 96% | 27% | 31% | 41% | 26% | 14% | 68% | 8% | Tier 2 |
| Food & Beverages | 92% | 24% | 26% | 51% | 31% | 11% | 68% | 23% | Tier 2 |
| Furniture | 97% | 33% | 28% | 49% | 40% | 21% | 67% | 5% | Tier 2 |
| Jewelry & Luxury | 83% | 28% | 23% | 41% | 42% | 34% | 80% | 9% | Tier 2 |
| Packaging & Containers | 95% | 18% | 35% | 42% | 17% | 11% | 80% | 6% | Tier 1 |
| Retail | 96% | 19% | 15% | 51% | 33% | 20% | 85% | 29% | Tier 2 |
| Sporting Goods | 89% | 26% | 24% | 41% | 49% | 32% | 78% | 7% | Tier 2 |
| Sports | 98% | 11% | 15% | 61% | 23% | 11% | 89% | 33% | Tier 1 |
| Textiles & Nonwovens | 92% | 6% | 38% | 35% | 17% | 14% | 78% | 7% | Tier 1 |
| Tobacco | 98% | 30% | 52% | 38% | 30% | 15% | 76% | 3% | Tier 1 |
| Wholesalers & Liquidators | 94% | 24% | 22% | 44% | 30% | 13% | 80% | 7% | Tier 2 |
| Wine & Spirits | 95% | 24% | 28% | 47% | 32% | 15% | 84% | 14% | Tier 1 |
Sports's 33% AI-blocking rate in robots.txt is the highest in the Retail & E-commerce cohort. WAF (98%) and JavaScript (61%) sit at the cohort on technical barriers.