Where are gamers today? (FB5e group)

The D&D 5e Facebook group published some data on where its members were I found curious and I wondered just how concentrated we all are geographically - short answer; there are definite strongholds of the game and they are mostly in North America with Australian a surprise rising second focus.

In 2017 the top 20 cities accounted for ~10% of the members of the Facebook group - 13 in the US, 3 in Canada, 2 in Australia, 1 in the UK and 1 in Bangladesh. For 2020 we only got the top 5 but it had changed to 2 in the US and 3 in Australia.

City	Rank 2017	Rank 2018	Rank 2020	Pop. 2020
New York City	1	4	1	8283550
Melbourne	>20	19	2	4967733
Sydney	18	6	3	4925987
Brisbane	5	>20	4	2406182
Los Angeles	3	5	5	3981560
London	2	12	> 5	9304016
Chicago	4	2	> 5	2686530
Toronto	6	3	> 5	6196731
Seattle	9	1	> 5	765115

There appears to be a strong tie between population and placing on these ratings but I think it is interesting to call out three cities in particular - Seattle, Chicago and Brisbane which seem to be showing a high level of activity for their size.

This is in-line with what has been seen in many surveys. It appears to be stable that ~3/4 of D&D is played in North America. These surveys are anglophone so unsurprising that the major cities are in English speaking countries. The strong presence of Australian cities is somewhat surprising, with some indications the game might be growing faster there than elsewhere if we look at how Sydney and Melbourne have risen since 2017.

Sources:

Facebook D&D 5e group 2020 demographics
Facebook D&D 5e group 2017 demographics
ENWorld poll
Meetup.com TTRPG groups
Twitter D&D Demographic Survey
Elderbrain
D&D Research Wizards Update #1
r/DnD Demographics