Ahead of Mario Day on March 10th, Casino Apps can reveal each U.S. state’s favourite ‘Mario’ character.
Using data from Google Trends, we have found the most popular ‘Mario’ character for all 50 U.S. states. We compared 10 characters, giving us an IOT (interest over time) rating for each over the last 12 months.
Every U.S State’s Most Popular ‘Mario’ Character
According to the data we found, YOSHI is the most popular Mario character across the U.S with 15 states favouring the dinosaur.
However, it was close for 2nd place with MARIO himself and DONKEY KONG both recording 13 popularity states across the board.
One key finding was that California had the most votes in favour of YOSHI, and Super Nintendo World is located there.
Another Super Nintendo World is also set to open in Florida later this year. WARIO was most popular in that state.
7 Individual States Prefer Evil ‘Mario’ Characters
The ‘Mushroom Kingdom’ sees plenty of evil characters, whilst seeing good in those such as Mario and Luigi.
And typically, Mario fans prefer those who are good and not evil. However, during our research we found that 7 states prefer evil. Find them listed below.
- Florida (Wario)
- Kansas (Waluigi)
- Maine (Bowser)
- Minnesota (Wario)
- North Carolina (Wario)
- Washington (Wario)
- West Virginia (Wario)
Evidently, Wario is a popular character across the board with five states voting in favour of him. Being an archnemesis to Mario, he features prominently throughout the series.
Donkey Kong The Highest-Earning Mario Series At $4.4b
Using data from Mario Wiki, Mario has earned over $55 billion globally from merchandise, films, etc. The franchise is the second highest earning video game franchise just after Pokemon.
In June 2024, the Mario franchise had sold over 900 million copies globally, making it the number one best selling video game franchise of all time. The main series had sold over 495 million copies.
The most successful platform is the Nintendo Entertainment System, selling 61.91 million consoles. In 1985, The main Super Mario series began with the release of Super Mario Bros. Overall, this played a massive contribution to the franchise’s success.
Among related Mario games, Donkey Kong has generated the most income from the franchise, with 17,791,825 sales and $4,400,000,000 in revenue.
Commentary
Neil Roarty, spokesperson of Casino Apps said the following about the data: “The Mario series is undoubtedly one of the most recognisable cartoons in the world. And with the 40 year anniversary of the Super Mario Bros game coming up in September, we thought it was relevant to conduct research on the different characters. With multiple generations experiencing the game over the years, it’s still popular in 2025 and looks set to continue in popularity for years to come.”
Methodology
Using Google Trends, we analysed search interest in 10 popular ‘Mario’ characters across all 50 U.S. states over the past 12 months.
Google Trends measured each character’s popularity using an Interest Over Time (IOT) metric which can reflect search volume.
The character with the highest IOT score in each state was identified as the most popular.
