CHICAGO (WGN) — In Chicago, sports and heartbreak go hand-in-hand.
The Bears just went 5-12 when ahead of the season, they had playoff aspirations. The Bulls are fresh off back-to-back demolitions from the Detroit Pistons and embarking on a rebuild heading into the NBA all-star break. The White Sox are coming off the most losses in a single season in MLB history. The Cubs seem content to finish 2-4 games above .500 and flush their playoff hopes down the toilet each September.
It sucks to be a Chicago sports fan right now.
So, it should be no surprise a study found Chicago Bears fans are the most heartbroken fans in football as we approach Valentine’s Day.
FlashPicks, a betting picks, parlays, predictions, and news brand, recently researched which NFL teams have the most heartbroken fans through a variety of factors, and released a Top 10 list of most heartbroken NFL fans based on their findings.
FlashPicks ranked each team by a score of 100 based on the number of tweets, Google searches and Reddit posts containing “heartbroken” language made by each NFL fanbase this season.
The study also considered the success of each NFL team, factoring in the number of years since each team’s last Super Bowl win, plus the number of Super Bowl defeats, playoff exits, and seasons without a playoff appearance.
Ranking first with a “heartbroken” score of 58.6 out of 100, Bears fans had a particularly bad habit of “heartbroken” tweets this season, as well as lonely Google searches and “heartbroken” Reddit posts, as frustrations have festered in Chicago in the 39 years since the Bears last Super Bowl victory.
Bears fans are responsible for a whopping 33,040 Google searches for speed dating and dating apps this season, as first dates in Chicago seemed just as scarce as Bears wins. Only NFL fans in Los Angeles were looking for love online at a higher frequency (49,460 searches). The average number of searches for dating terms in cities across America came in at 17,300 searches since September 2024.
There were also 40 Reddit posts containing words like “alone” and “heartbreak” on the Bears forum this season, plus 467 tweets with the word “sad” and 89 tweets with the word “angry.”
Over the years, Bears fans have been dealt more heartbreak than most by their team, with the Monsters of the Midway being eliminated in the playoffs on 20 different occasions, and even missing out on the playoffs entirely in 78 different seasons in the Bears’ history.
Here’s how the top 10 most heartbroken NFL fans ranked:
| Rank | NFL fanbase | Total ‘heartbroken’ score /100 |
| 1. | Chicago Bears | 58.6 |
| 2. | Detroit Lions | 58 |
| 3. | Kansas City Chiefs | 56.7 |
| 4. | Buffalo Bills | 54.4 |
| 5. | Cincinnati Bengals | 54 |
| 6. | Cleveland Browns | 53.7 |
| 7. | Los Angeles Chargers | 52.8 |
| 8. | Washington Commanders | 50 |
| 9. | Philadelphia Eagles | 49.8 |
| 10. | Miami Dolphins | 48.9 |
In second place are Detroit Lions fans, with a total “heartbroken” score of 58 out of 100. Despite being one of this season’s favorites, the Lions are still one of 12 franchises without a Super Bowl win to show off. Lions fans were the most vocal when expressing their heartbreak on X (Twitter), with 594 heartbroken tweets this season, and 367 of those coming in December.
Ranking third are the Kansas City Chiefs fans, fresh from being denied a three-peat at Super Bowl LIX. The Chiefs fans scored 56.7 out of 100 for having their hearts broken this season. They made the most mentions of ‘lonely’, ‘alone’, and ‘heartbreak’ on Reddit this season with 160 posts, and were also evidently on the lookout for love with 22,840 searches for ‘speed dating near me’, ‘dates with NFL fans’, and dating app sign-ups.
At the opposite end of the table, New Orleans Saints fans were named the least heartbroken this season, with a score of just 23.4 out of 100. The likes of the Baltimore Ravens (25.8), the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (26.7), and the Indianapolis Colts (29.4) were also amongst this season’s least heartbroken fans.