If America's professional sports leagues were established today, what cities would gain or lose teams? (cons, downtown)
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As much as like the little guys like Buffalo (and also Green Bay), there are about 10 metro areas in the US that have more population than Buffalo, and most are usually more prosperous. Even with the Canadian "gravy" from across the border, it's hard to believe that Buffalo would make the cut if the NFL were built from scratch today.
Buffalo used to be a much more significant city on a national scale in the US.
I don’t know...Again, you have to consider the adjacent areas. This is especially key with the NFL, where it is a 1 game a week usually on the weekend type of league. Rochester, Syracuse, Erie PA, Southern Tier of NY and Northern Tier of PA area folks go to Bills games too. That is roughly 4 million people just from those areas within a little over a couple of hours, not including the nearby Canadian population.
It also doesn’t or didn’t have the major college sports competition that some of these new growth cities/areas have. So, that may be another thing to consider.
I think it is tough to say, but in terms of losing the team, population isn’t the issue. It is the stadium that is more of the issue.
ok, I'm going to take a deep dive... excluding Canadian markets, there are 43 markets with pro franchises (50 if you count Canadian cities), and I'm going to use 50 mile radius to sort this out. Now, a 50 mile radius isn't perfect for all the cities, but for most of the markets here the 50 mile radius captures the areas where fans would go to a game. Exceptions go to New Orleans, LA, Buffalo, and Chicago, where I felt that the 75 mile radius was better to find outer areas closer in than 75 miles but also very close to the 50 mile radius I described earlier (Baton Rouge, San Bernardino/Riverside, Rochester, and outer fringes of Chicago's metro; Baton Rouge is debatable but I included it). Also of note, DC and Baltimore's 50 mile radius basically overlapped each other; so those two are combined for this, and Fairfax County, which wasn't for some reason included in the radius (even though it's well within 50 miles for DC), was added to the figure. Also of note, Charlotte's population swelled from just north of 3 million at the 50 mile radius to just shy of 5 million when increased 25 miles outward, but I kept it at the 50 since Spartanburg and other areas included aren't really Charlotte's area. And I think that's every thing of note, so here we go...
So basically what I did was find the 50 mile radius (exceptions were stated above) of every market in America that has one or more teams in the Big 5. This added up to a specific number of people in America, to where I divided that number by 141 (the number of Big 5 sports teams in America). Once I did that, I used my number to divide the city's 50-mile radius population by my number to get a number like 3.3, or the number of sports teams that should be in the market relative to the market's population. An example:
Boston's 50 mile radius population is 7,406,952. The amount of people per one team (every market's population added up / 141 (amount of Big 5 clubs) was 1,417,684. So:
7,406,952 / 1,417,684 = 5.224684768 (rounded down to 5 since you can't have .22nds of a sports team)
So Boston based on its 50 mile radius "should" have 5 teams, which it does. The rounding up and down mostly shook itself out (Cleveland and Chicago were at 2.47 and at 7.4, so since they were closest to rounding up to a team, they got one extra team apiece ). And so, the results:
(all these results are hypothetical)
SEA -1 (team) STL -1 DC/BAL -1
SAC +1 NSH -1 RDU +1
SAN +1 MSP -2 CLT -1
PHX -1 LA +3 ORL +1
DEN - 2 SFO -1 MIA -1
AUS +1 CIN -1 the rest of the markets have no change
SAT +1 PGH -1
KC -1 PHL +1
HOU +1 NYC +3
Likely not. But not because the Omaha metro and surrounding area doesn’t have the population base to support pro sports..nor because Omahans and Nebraskans care too much about Husker football. That ship sailed with NU’s past 20 years of irrelevance and futility in college football..
The real reason would be lack of corporate support and sponsorship. Omaha, much like Indianapolis several decades ago, has morphed into an “Event Town”.. Corporate sponsorship of these events are plentiful. But when it comes to a top tier professional sports franchise..not so much. Omaha ticks all the boxes in currently having most AAA level minor league pro sports. But it would be nice to have that support to try and bring one major in (NHL, Major League Soccer or NBA). But with the lack of enthusiastic corporate leaders, it’s a pipe dream at best. Oklahoma City should thank their lucky stars for this as that’s the ONLY way and reason the Thunder currently play there.
Omaha would immediately be the smallest, or among the smallest in a couple of cases, markets in any of the major top level pro sports leagues. Lack of population is absolutely part of the equation. The corporate piece is part of the equation too, but it isn't the only reason.
ok, I'm going to take a deep dive... excluding Canadian markets, there are 43 markets with pro franchises (50 if you count Canadian cities), and I'm going to use 50 mile radius to sort this out. Now, a 50 mile radius isn't perfect for all the cities, but for most of the markets here the 50 mile radius captures the areas where fans would go to a game. Exceptions go to New Orleans, LA, Buffalo, and Chicago, where I felt that the 75 mile radius was better to find outer areas closer in than 75 miles but also very close to the 50 mile radius I described earlier (Baton Rouge, San Bernardino/Riverside, Rochester, and outer fringes of Chicago's metro; Baton Rouge is debatable but I included it). Also of note, DC and Baltimore's 50 mile radius basically overlapped each other; so those two are combined for this, and Fairfax County, which wasn't for some reason included in the radius (even though it's well within 50 miles for DC), was added to the figure. Also of note, Charlotte's population swelled from just north of 3 million at the 50 mile radius to just shy of 5 million when increased 25 miles outward, but I kept it at the 50 since Spartanburg and other areas included aren't really Charlotte's area. And I think that's every thing of note, so here we go...
So basically what I did was find the 50 mile radius (exceptions were stated above) of every market in America that has one or more teams in the Big 5. This added up to a specific number of people in America, to where I divided that number by 141 (the number of Big 5 sports teams in America). Once I did that, I used my number to divide the city's 50-mile radius population by my number to get a number like 3.3, or the number of sports teams that should be in the market relative to the market's population. An example:
Boston's 50 mile radius population is 7,406,952. The amount of people per one team (every market's population added up / 141 (amount of Big 5 clubs) was 1,417,684. So:
7,406,952 / 1,417,684 = 5.224684768 (rounded down to 5 since you can't have .22nds of a sports team)
So Boston based on its 50 mile radius "should" have 5 teams, which it does. The rounding up and down mostly shook itself out (Cleveland and Chicago were at 2.47 and at 7.4, so since they were closest to rounding up to a team, they got one extra team apiece ). And so, the results:
(all these results are hypothetical)
SEA -1 (team) STL -1 DC/BAL -1
SAC +1 NSH -1 RDU +1
SAN +1 MSP -2 CLT -1
PHX -1 LA +3 ORL +1
DEN - 2 SFO -1 MIA -1
AUS +1 CIN -1 the rest of the markets have no change
SAT +1 PGH -1
KC -1 PHL +1
HOU +1 NYC +3
I appreciate your methodology, even if I’m not 100% on board. It really helps illustrate why (thankfully) teams aren’t assigned solely on population. Some great cities with long traditions and/or top fan support lose teams in your example (STL, Nashville, KC, CLT, MSP), while other cities that have trouble supporting their existing franchises with attendance get more (LA is the glaring one hear, but RDU doesn’t exactly have attendance to brag about with the Canes).
As has been pointed out the modern day sports franchising model is all based on media markets. What's surprised me in reading this is that everyone seems to think this revenue starts and ends in the immediate media market whatever teams are located in. For instance NFL teams are put into primary, and secondary media markets. Let's use Detroit which was brought up as a city that shouldn't have 4 teams.
Detroit media markets:
Primary:
Detroit #14
Secondary:
Grand Rapids #45
Flint #77
Toledo #80
Lansing #112
Traverse City #121
Alpena #208
(Windsor and SW Ontario are Detroit fans but not counted as part of the media market)
The Detroit NFL team pulls advertising revenue and ticket sales from almost the entire state of Michigan. As well as north western portions of Ohio, and southwestern Ontario. Most of its other teams come close to this as well. This is basically an 11 million person potential fanbase that would consider themselves "local" if you will. There's a good reason Detroit is, and should be a 4 franchise city.
Why on earth would anyone smart enough and rich enough to own a sports franchise ignore a market that big, and with that massive of a corporate presence? Simply because it's not growing as fast as a market 1/4-1/3rd its size? It would be one of the most short sighted and naive business decisions one could make in that industry. Not to mention some of these growing cities mentioned aren't even the sole sports market in their respective states.
As has been pointed out the modern day sports franchising model is all based on media markets. What's surprised me in reading this is that everyone seems to think this revenue starts and ends in the immediate media market whatever teams are located in. For instance NFL teams are put into primary, and secondary media markets. Let's use Detroit which was brought up as a city that shouldn't have 4 teams.
Detroit media markets:
Primary:
Detroit #14
Secondary:
Grand Rapids #45
Flint #77
Toledo #80
Lansing #112
Traverse City #121
Alpena #208
(Windsor and SW Ontario are Detroit fans but not counted as part of the media market)
The Detroit NFL team pulls advertising revenue and ticket sales from almost the entire state of Michigan. As well as north western portions of Ohio, and southwestern Ontario. Most of its other teams come close to this as well. This is basically an 11 million person potential fanbase that would consider themselves "local" if you will. There's a good reason Detroit is, and should be a 4 franchise city.
Why on earth would anyone smart enough and rich enough to own a sports franchise ignore a market that big, and with that massive of a corporate presence? Simply because it's not growing as fast as a market 1/4-1/3rd its size? It would be one of the most short sighted and naive business decisions one could make in that industry. Not to mention some of these growing cities mentioned aren't even the sole sports market in their respective states.
Definitely spot on. You said what I struggled to put into words. I think a number of other legacy cities such as Buffalo, Cleveland and Cincinnati among others are being short changed on size.
Definitely spot on. You said what I struggled to put into words. I think a number of other legacy cities such as Buffalo, Cleveland and Cincinnati among others are being short changed on size.
Also to note, some of these cities designated to (hypothetically) lose a sports team are cities where one has been added in the last few years (Cincy, STL, Nashville, Minneapolis, etc).
Likely not. But not because the Omaha metro and surrounding area doesn’t have the population base to support pro sports..nor because Omahans and Nebraskans care too much about Husker football. That ship sailed with NU’s past 20 years of irrelevance and futility in college football..
The real reason would be lack of corporate support and sponsorship. Omaha, much like Indianapolis several decades ago, has morphed into an “Event Town”.. Corporate sponsorship of these events are plentiful. But when it comes to a top tier professional sports franchise..not so much. Omaha ticks all the boxes in currently having most AAA level minor league pro sports. But it would be nice to have that support to try and bring one major in (NHL, Major League Soccer or NBA). But with the lack of enthusiastic corporate leaders, it’s a pipe dream at best. Oklahoma City should thank their lucky stars for this as that’s the ONLY way and reason the Thunder currently play there.
Omaha would immediately be the smallest, or among the smallest in a couple of cases, markets in any of the major top level pro sports leagues. Lack of population is absolutely part of the equation. The corporate piece is part of the equation too, but it isn't the only reason.
Omaha would be among the smallest. But I believe there is enough sustainable population within its metro and CSA and population within a 2 hour radius of its downtown core, to sustain 1 major league franchise. Just one- out of NHL, MIS or NBA..
The bigger and more difficult piece, is the corporate support and sponsorship part. Without that, major league professional sports for Omaha is a pipe dream.
So, Omaha has actually had a pro team at one time.
I know that Creighton Basketball draws a lot of people and has for a while.
As I stated in an earlier post, I attended most all of those NBA Kings games when they played in Omaha in the 70’s. One of my fondest memories as a kid. And they actually continued to play games in Omaha through 1978. Omaha always drew great NBA crowds..
And the Creighton Bluejays are among the top 10 attendance draws in division 1 college basketball. They’re easily #1 in home attendance in the Big East conference.
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