Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
The Tampa/St Pete area is nearing 3 million people. Add that with Orlando and it is nearing 5 million people. It is a much larger market than San Antonio and Austin combined. There is a reason why it has all four of the major sports team. Not to mention that Tampa is the 2nd largest and Orlando is the 3rd largest metro areas in the state whereas San Antonio is 3rd and Austin is 4th (5th if you look at MSA) in the state and it's a big drop off from 1st and 2nd largest metros.
That said, San Antonio could easily support an NFL team and I think Austin can support an NHL team. I don't think neither can support MLB though (even combined) and personally, I have or should say had my doubts about Tampa/Orlando as well. It will quickly go back to have my doubts when/if they start losing. Florida in general is not that great of a pro sports state as they were threatning to contract both Florida's baseball teams a few years ago. Tampa's crowds was terrible until they started winning.
Austin though is ran by UT and it's sports teams and this is something that Tampa nor Orlando has to compete with in it's metro areas which is a very big reason why it doesn't have not ONE team from one of the major four leagues.
I'll go ahead and toss a yellow flag on this question - San Antonio and Austin ARE NOT a single "metro area". No government entity considers them such. They do not share a media market, sports teams, or even a substantial commuter presence. They are two different metro areas, and YOU LIVE IN ONE OR THE OTHER.
The distance from San Antonio to Austin is roughly the same as the distance from Philadelphia to Baltimore - consider them a "metro area"? How about Philadelphia and New York? Chicago and Milwaukee? San Diego and Los Angeles? Does anybody catch the commuter train to leave their house on Zarzamora Street and work in Round Rock? It takes more than a few backwoods villages on I-35 with the occasional new housing development to "connect" a metro area. It's not there, folks.
Simply forcing some fictional anschluss of the two on an internet forum does not change reality - San Antonio and Austin are two very different cities and two distinct metro areas. Look at nearly any hard demographic statistic, or "soft" cultural impression, and this is more than understood. Ask an Austinite if he feels he is in the "San Antonio/Austin" metro area, and you will encounter the same confusion I had when first broached about this Walter Mitty fantasy a few years ago. The concept only exists in the ether of city-data.com.
On a related note, at least one publication predicts Austin's metro area population surpassing San Antonio's by 2025 (bizjournals: Projected population of 250 U.S. metros (http://www.bizjournals.com/specials/pages/257.html - broken link)). They, along with the rest of Texas and the United States, resisted the urge to call it the "San Antonio-Austin" metro area.
And Tampa/Orlando is a single metro area? Sure, ask someone in Austin or San Antonio and you get one answer, but ask someone in Comal, Guadalupe or Hays Counties and you will get a different answer. They do share the media market-newspapers, radio, and TV- in these areas.
The bizjournal projections are B.S.. The BJ San Antonio projections are low by 30+ to 50K for 2010. Who knows how far off they will be by 2025. When I see a report with this many flaws, not just for San Antonio, but many other cities, I defiantly do not site it as a credible reference. The census estimate for 2008 shows San Antonio over 2.03 million.
San Antonio city limit population is almost twice the size. Austin covers nearly 300 square miles, comprable, although a little smaller than San Antonio's land area. S.A nearly 1.4 million to Austin 700k. S.A city limts has more people than all Travis and Williamson county, over 2000 square miles. I wouldn't say they are almost the same size and feel.
......how would that change anything??? You still have Austin.
I was just playing. IMO, all four (or two in this case) are pretty cool.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
