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I disagree about NYC and New England being more popular baseball towns than football. Patriots, Giants and Jets dominate sports radio and overall sports discussion in the East, even now.
That being said, Sox and Yanks and Mets have huge followings, larger than most, as seen by their attendance at away games nationally. But Northeast metro areas' media really pushes the NFL storylines and controversies and personalities. (If Deflategate happened in, say, Kansas City, it would be far less of a story.)
I also don't think Baltimore is all about the O's anymore, great fans that they are. NL team in DC and the Ravens have diluted that focus.
With the exception of St. Louis and maybe Cincinnati (when they're winning) and maybe KC recently (and thirty years ago), baseball's in second place. And in some towns (Tampa/Denver/DFW and possibly Miami and lately Cleveland), third.
It's not 1955 anymore.
You see it wrong - football is much, much more popular there (and everywhere in the country) than baseball.
Instead of "more popular," maybe "smallest gap between" or something like that should have been the title. Boston is football crazy (see: Patriots), and so is NYC. St Louis is the closest call I can think of, a smaller metro (in comparison) with a rabid MLB following and a junk NFL squad.
Just check out polls and so forth, and you'll see that the NFL is around 4 times more popular than MLB, which is closer in popularity to NHL than football.
Because apples to apples - bring in amateurs, and pretty much no one follows college baseball (or the minors) in comparison to college football, and it's even less a comparison.
How is it possible that the Royals got TWO mentions on this thread in 2013 (when they were a promising but still crappy team) and NONE since then (having pulled off the most dramatic win of the season - Wild Card Game - swept the division and league championships, barely lost the World Series in Game 7, and maintained near total dominance over the American League so far in the 2015 season)?
The Chiefs are still a HUGE DEAL in Kansas City, but the Royals have now solidified their alpha status in this cowtown.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nanox
One that people may not know is Kansas City. Kansas City is sort of like Chicago, as you mentioned in regards to Baseball being *slightly* more popular than Football. During the late 70's and early 80's when the Royals were actually competitive, my Dad (who grew up in KC) said that there was nothing bigger in KC than the Royals. Absolutely nothing. They have not made the post-season in 28 years (longest playoff drought in all pro sports) and have had 2 wnning seasons (the first being in 2003 and the second one being this season) in 20 years. And yet, the Royals STILL average 20,000 to 25,000 a game. The loyalty Kansas Citians have to the Royals is not matched by any other MLB city, in my opinion, except maybe Cubs fans. It's frustrating too because what the current ownership has done to the Royals franchise does not deserve the kind of loyalty, dedication, and support Kansas Citians give them. Last year when the Chiefs had their worst season (2-14) ever, the result was the first blacked out Chiefs game in decades. I think Chiefs fans tend to be a *tiny* bit more fairweather about the Chiefs than Royals fans are for the Royals. Hopefully George Brett will buy the team soon and turn the Royals into a consistently competitive and respectable team again, like Ewing Kauffman did so wonderfully. And KC can get a new ballpark built downtown and become one of the biggest baseball towns once again.
Oh and fun fact: From 1980 to 1989, the Royals had the 5th highest overall attendance in the MLB for that whole decade. Pretty amazing for being the second smallest MLB market behind Milwaukee.
Yea, I was going to mention KC, but figured people would think I'm crazy. People think KC is all about the Chiefs, but that so not true at all.
But there are still a few cities out there that are just baseball nuts.
Number one is St Louis by a mile. People have no idea how crazy StL is about their Cardinals. StL would be followed by Boston and then Chicago would be a pretty distant third, the Bears are quite popular in Chicago, but MLB is still king.
Most other cities I think are pretty evenly split. Sure, NFL is more popular on TV, but it's focused into just 16 days while MLB is spread out over 160. It takes a lot of fans to support a MLB team.
Football is more popular than baseball in LA - just look at the TV ratings for playoffs and the Super Bowl vs MLB ratings.
Again, it's this way in every metro in the entire country.
But baseball's local market appeal can't be so easily dismissed. The TV ratings in the cities with participating teams in the WS are many times greater than the national ratings. The same can't be said for the Super Bowl. Nor can anybody minimize the significance of sales of tickets to people who actually get off their couches to watch the games. In this market, a million more people attend MLB games each year than in NYC. And nobody shed a tear when the Rams and Raiders left at the same time.
Doesn't matter - NFL is still, given all that, bigger in the LA metro than MLB.
Local market appeal is huge, sure, but not enough to make up for the NFL's total team sport dominance across the board.
It does matter. In this instance, what other than attendance and ratings comprises "across the board"? Fantasy league dorks? Gambling? Both are derivative of the actual sport.
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