Jeopardy Contestants Deprioritize Learning Sports Facts

A former Jeopardy! contestant analyzed question data across the show's 40-year, nearly 10,000-episode run and finds sports questions occur slightly more than once per week but rarely appear in the higher-value Double Jeopardy round. Because sports answers churn faster and carry lower dollar value, contestants rationally deprioritize studying them, even though aggregate accuracy shows contestants perform reasonably on sports clues.