How big is the LEGO community?

[Lego David]

I was just wandering... Is there any way we can know approximately how many currently active people are in the LEGO community? From your experience, how many do you think there are? 

I personally think it's about 1 million at the very least. JANGBRICKS, one of the largest LEGO YouTubers,  has about 1.19 Million subscribers. But that's just one YouTuber, and most people I know aren't even subscribed to Jang. So in total, there may be as many as 2 million (possibly even more) people currently in the LEGO community. 

 

What do you think? Does anyone know any approximate number of the LEGO community members?

 

 

Edited January 11, 2020 by Lego David

[MAB]

I don't think it is possible to define what the LEGO community is, let alone determine its size.

[Mylenium]

Well, this is a "Go big or go home" thing. You are way, way underestimating the numbers IMO. You could assume that there are several hundred million people that identify as LEGO fans and out of that crowd at least ten percent might actively participate in any kind of organized communities. Just take LEGO Ideas - some contests over there have 10000+ participants and those are just the people who are a) actually follow LEGO Ideas proactively and are registered, b) are interested in a given subject and c) have time to join the competition. Any text book on statistics can tell you how to extrapolate from there. Of course it's an open debate what qualifies as "community", but suffice it to say that anything LEGO-related is potentially huge.

Mylenium

[Lego David]

16 minutes ago, MAB said:

I don't think it is possible to define what the LEGO community is

 

15 minutes ago, Mylenium said:

Of course it's an open debate what qualifies as "community", but suffice it to say that anything LEGO-related is potentially huge.

What I personally think is a LEGO community member is someone who actively follows the new LEGO-related content that comes out and interacts at least in some capacity with other members, whether that would be trough forums, conventions, social media, etc. 

 

[The Island Chronicles]

Uh.....this would be the first and only time I'd do this. But.......To tell you the truth......I can't really give you an answer. 

Edited January 11, 2020 by pooda

[MAB]

That definition covers every child that looks at sets on a supermarket shelf and talks to a friend about LEGO. So I'd put it at probably of the order of 100 million worldwide. Complete guess of course.

 

[The Island Chronicles]

16 hours ago, MAB said:

That definition covers every child that looks at sets on a supermarket shelf and talks to a friend about LEGO. So I'd put it at probably of the order of 100 million worldwide. Complete guess of course.

.....and adults that are like "Hey! This would look good in my town" or "That would be nice to decirate my desk with!". 

Edited January 14, 2020 by Brandon Pea

[Toastie]

14 hours ago, MAB said:

That definition covers every child that looks at sets on a supermarket shelf and talks to a friend about LEGO. So I'd put it at probably of the order of 100 million worldwide. Complete guess of course.

... provided, "every child in the world" can actually look at such shelves. I doubt though that this is the case. The majority of children in this world have to take care of other things.

Best
Thorsten

 

[MAB]

12 hours ago, Toastie said:

... provided, "every child in the world" can actually look at such shelves. I doubt though that this is the case. The majority of children in this world have to take care of other things.

Best
Thorsten

 

Not really. I didn't mention every child in the world. I mentioned every child that looks at sets on supermarket shelves.

There are about 80M children in USA+Canada, and about 80M in Europe. There is something like 2.25 billion children worldwide but about 2 billion of those are in developing countries. So my guess of 100M is based on the developed world, and not those in developing countries where the majority are unlikely to be LEGO fans.

Of course, there will be fans in developing countries, especially those where there is poverty but a rich middle class.

 

[Lego David]

3 minutes ago, MAB said:

Not really. I didn't mention every child in the world. I mentioned every child that looks at sets on supermarket shelves.

There are about 80M children in USA+Canada, and about 80M in Europe. There is something like 2.25 billion children worldwide but about 2 billion of those are in developing countries. So my guess of 100M is based on the developed world, and not those in developing countries where the majority are unlikely to be LEGO fans.

Of course, there will be fans in developing countries, especially those where there is poverty but a rich middle class.

 

What I personally count as a "fan" is someone who actively follows with everything new that is being released. I doubt most kids that buy LEGO do that.

Edited January 14, 2020 by Lego David

[MAB]

3 minutes ago, Lego David said:

What I personally count as a "fan" is someone who actively follows with everything new that is being released. I doubt most kids that buy LEGO do that.

That brings me back to my first answer. I don't think it is possible to define what the LEGO community is, let alone determine its size.

You think a fan is someone that follows everything new that is being released. That is rather narrow as it excludes fans that follow only technic, or only architecture, or only system sets, or only a specific license such as SW sets, or fans of LEGO in general that do not follow everything LEGO produces. I doubt that most people that consider themselves AFOLs follow everything new that is released. I have no interest in DUPLO so I do not follow that. I have no interest in the new DOTS range, so I will not follow news of that. I have no interest in quite a few themes, so I do not follow them. I do not actively follow everything new, so I am not a fan by your definition. Although I consider myself a fan of LEGO.

So yeah, I don't think it is possible to define what the community is, let alone determine how big it is.

 

[The Island Chronicles]

1 hour ago, Lego David said:

What I personally count as a "fan" is someone who actively follows with everything new that is being released. I doubt most kids that buy LEGO do that.

Unless there are KFOLs who do that, that would kinda be unfair! Do you think? 

[Lego David]

6 hours ago, MAB said:

You think a fan is someone that follows everything new that is being released. That is rather narrow as it excludes fans that follow only technic, or only architecture, or only system sets, or only a specific license such as SW sets, or fans of LEGO in general that do not follow everything LEGO produces. I doubt that most people that consider themselves AFOLs follow everything new that is released. I have no interest in DUPLO so I do not follow that. I have no interest in the new DOTS range, so I will not follow news of that. I have no interest in quite a few themes, so I do not follow them. I do not actively follow everything new, so I am not a fan by your definition. Although I consider myself a fan of LEGO.

So yeah, I don't think it is possible to define what the community is, let alone determine how big it is

I don't mean everything, I just mean following in general with the new products. Or in other words, having a decent knowledge about what it's currently happening with LEGO. 

[MAB]

So why rule out kids? Many follow Lego news and read the Lego life magazine or other Lego comics

 

[The Island Chronicles]

36 minutes ago, MAB said:

So why rule out kids? Many follow Lego news and read the Lego life magazine or other Lego comics

 

...and the kids who watch shows like Ninjago or my personal favorite......Lego City Adventures. 

[Toastie]

11 hours ago, MAB said:

Not really. I didn't mention every child in the world. I mentioned every child that looks at sets on supermarket shelves.

There are about 80M children in USA+Canada, and about 80M in Europe. There is something like 2.25 billion children worldwide but about 2 billion of those are in developing countries. So my guess of 100M is based on the developed world, and not those in developing countries where the majority are unlikely to be LEGO fans.

Of course, there will be fans in developing countries, especially those where there is poverty but a rich middle class.

You are right - I misread that part.

On the other hand, from my group's research collaborations with Bangladesh and the Ivory Coast, the "rich middle class" is a tiny fraction of the population - and essentially belongs to the lower upper class. A typical middle class does not exist. And the upper class is hardly to be recognized as a "class"; these are or less "groups of individuals", when you count heads.

That is just my impression.

Best
Thorsten

[LegoDW]

I have no idea on the exact number, but suspect it is dropping due to recent sets low quality of stickers! 

Seriously my guess is around 40 million but this is just a guess.  Feel a lot of people like Lego but they are not all active members of the community.  

 

.  

[koalayummies]

98,674,251

Edit: someone just stepped on a 2x2 corner brick so the revised number is now:

98,674,250

[Toastie]

22 hours ago, koalayummies said:

Edit: someone just stepped on a 2x2 corner brick so the revised number is now:

98,674,250

Edit: I talked today to a student. About this and that and LEGO. He said that he had a bucket full of LEGO bricks in the basement and wants to take a look.

Which means that there is a potential additional fan. As a proposal, these are appended to the true count:

98,674,250 (+1)

Best
Thorsten

 

[Mylenium]

On 1/14/2020 at 10:38 PM, MAB said:

So why rule out kids? Many follow Lego news and read the Lego life magazine or other Lego comics

Well, you could always argue that they are not the ones buying the stuff. ;-) In any case, it's probably a moot point. Surely you could measure sales or people being organized in LUGs and other fan organizations, but it will simply be impossible to determine the overall volume of people who might perceive themselves as belonging to a specific community.

Mylenium

[Mylenium]

On 1/14/2020 at 7:38 PM, Lego David said:

I don't mean everything, I just mean following in general with the new products. Or in other words, having a decent knowledge about what it's currently happening with LEGO. 

Technically irrelevant. You see, in the past I used to run blogs/ web sites on some very specific topics and had a lot of behind-the-scenes knowledge on some of that stuff, wrote literally thousands of forum posts to help out people and had thousands of visitors each week on my sites. None of that, however, meant/ means anything in terms of "decent knowledge". There's always something you're missing about the community at large and even if you interact with a gazillion people, chances are there's an even larger fraction that you're missing out on. There is also a lot of random noise like e.g. occasional users that don't participate in the "community" other than getting their immediate issues resolved and questions answered. To put it in simple terms: There may be billions of LEGO consumers and within that group many might consider themselves part of some sort of community, but very few will care about these things beyond a certain point and might never meet your threshold. Even I myself would not fit most likely because there are too many things about LEGO I just don't care for...

Mylenium

[MAB]

1 hour ago, Mylenium said:

Well, you could always argue that they are not the ones buying the stuff. ;-) In any case, it's probably a moot point.

I agree with it being a moot point, as you don't have to buy it to be a fan of something or be part of a community. If gets get LEGO as presents and talk about it, or if they attend LEGO fan days, etc they are still part of the LEGO community.

 

[The Island Chronicles]

The Lego community is so enormous that if Lego were to become extinct, the end of the world would come very quickly. 

[1963maniac]

3 hours ago, Brandon Pea said:

The Lego community is so enormous that if Lego were to become extinct, the end of the world would come very quickly. 

THAT'S PROFOUND!!!!

[The Island Chronicles]

2 hours ago, 1963maniac said:

THAT'S PROFOUND!!!!

Aye! Every morning, instead of bright blue skies, I'll be seeing more crime than you'd see in Lego City.